In a Test-Score Frenzy, We’ve Lost Sight of Vocation

Strawberry fields in Oxnard

Can you see the people

Sweating,

Picking

The sweet juicy berries?

The working class people have heart,

And they also have soul, and they

Also are human, and also are free.

They should also be respected

For the hard-working class

They live every day in.

--Joseph

*

Joseph sits in the back of my class, often silent but generally attentive and always courteous. I don’t know what his Stanford 9 scores are, but judging by his performance on my academic tests, I can assume they’re about average.

Basically, he is a hard-working C student who has excellent attendance and citizenship. Unfortunately, in an educational system driven by grade-point averages and test scores, such attributes are seldom recognized, save for a paper certificate of appreciation or two.

I worry about Joseph and all the Josephs out there who are not college bound yet have so much to offer society in the way of hard work and all-too-uncommon common decency.

I wonder what he’ll do once he receives his diploma. Yes, he can read, write and compute well enough to pass proficiency exams. But upon graduation he and so many others like him will be hard pressed to find employment that provides a living wage. And finding such employment will be paramount for him. He already works 30 hours a week to help support himself and his family.

Joseph has told me that he plans to enlist in the Marines. The armed forces are often the choice of students like Joseph who lack the academic aptitude or the money to go on to college. With vastly more of every federal dollar going to defense spending than budgeted for education, it is apparent that the military is the only continuing education program we as a nation are truly willing to fully fund.

This is why the Land of the Free is, for the most part, defended by the sons and daughters of the working poor.

*

This month, thousands of working-class families will watch their sons and daughters march across the graduation stage and, with bittersweet tears, they will cheer their best hope for the future.

I wonder how well we educators have tended this precious crop, sown by these laborers who make our lives comfortable. How well have those with means served the people who serve our food, package our products, sew our garments, mow our lawns, clean our offices, tend our sick, watch our toddlers and work in all the other underpaid and thankless jobs that add to the quality of our lives?

We owe Joseph and students like him not only greater access to college funding but also the training they need to earn a living wage upon high school graduation. It isn’t enough to raise test scores and devise exit exams. We must provide our students with real-world skills.

It’s time to invest in vocational education. Until we do, our high schools will continue to fail many of our good, hard-working students.