Did you ever? 

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Did you ever come across a person, perhaps in the supermarket, a dentist’s office or anywhere you happen to engage people, who has a certain spark, an intuitiveness and wonder? Wonder why they are a cashier, a stockperson or perhaps a receptionist, when they seem to be capable of more, but you know not what? 

Sometimes people, for whatever reason irrespective of their talents, are pleased with their employment in life, but many are stuck. Our society attaches great importance to the level of degrees attained and the issuing institutions. So a person who just cannot understand algebra or geometry, not to mention trigonometry may receive a high school diploma with poor grades, and a distaste for and disillusionment with further education. Some people are limited with respect to further schooling by financial or family circumstances. 

As the issue of income disparity in America is being frequently discussed these days, it might be constructive to consider whether the emphasis on educational achievement isn’t being overdone. Perhaps we paint with too broad a brush. I by no means undervalue education, but is the proposed Associate Degree the answer for everyone. Whatever happened to apprenticeships, mentoring, company training programs and such? 

It seems that if you just have a high school diploma in our society you are relegated to lifetime low-wage employment irrespective of that inherent intuition and certain spark that many young people possess. Furthermore, there is such a thing as a “late bloomer.” Many people do not come into themselves at the young age of 18 or 20. Yet a resume that does not fit the normal mode is often put aside or pigeonholed by prospective employers and educators.     

Despite the good intentions of government, democracy, by its very nature, has difficulty being subjective and is forced to generalize.  So President Obama and others propose universal community college, when in my view a menu of government-supported opportunities beyond high school would be preferable to a one size fits all program.  

Government partnering with union apprenticeships, corporate training programs and tailored certificates by the education community might be more interesting to an 18-year-old than yet another degree.

The wealth of our nation is its people and what they produce.  

Howard Ring lives in Riverdale.

Howard Ring

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