I had a realisation today... I put my car into get checked at the mechanic and after seeing the $2500 at the bottom of the list of things that need to be fixed, I wondered, yet again, whether university is worth it. $2500 is a tenth of my pay for the year in my dead end casual job. Is university really worth getting paid $20,000 a year to do a job I hate to possibly, eventually get a better job than I could get now?
Now this revelation doesn't seem to have a whole lot of do with education. Why should my complaining about life be put in my education blog? Why does it matter?
It matters because this is how my students will feel when I hand them an assignment and they have more important things to deal with. Is the assignment worth 25% of their grade worth anything to them. As long as they pass what else does it matter? Do they really care about Shakespeare, will they ever use Homer, when will they ever need to list all of Australia's presidents and what does learning their names teach them?
We were all brought up with the notion that you study hard to get into university so you can get a better job. Is that true these days though? I know many people who've quit school in year 10 who've got alright jobs that pay alright money. Where as I know a few people who have diploma's and degree's who can't find jobs, so they're still doing their dead end casual jobs they picked up in university.
We need real world information in high school because there is no more guarantee that children are going to want to continue on their schooling when the reasons behind it are no longer valid. A $20000 HECs dept to do a degree that may or may not get you a job is not going to be enough to tempt the students of the future.
We need to work out our students priorities, just like I need to work out my own. What is important? What isn't? and what is vital
