This year two bright young high school students I know did something quite unexpected. They graduated.
One has spent much of his high school years addressing thorny mental health issues. The other (someone I have a semi-maternal interest in) just doesn’t like school — except for the social aspect — and really couldn’t be bothered to complete homework; he had failed about half of all his classes each semester. While it was abundantly clear to all the adults in his life that he was destined for a fifth year of high school, it came as a complete shock to him. When he found out in early May that the school would not allow him to walk with his classmates (despite his assurances that he’d make up the credits), he stopped going to school. I found this heartbreaking, but not surprising.
What I did find surprising, was what the students did about it. Each found an alternative ed school where they could make up their credits by taking open-book tests. Within about two weeks each had made up their credits and graduated — before their go-to-school-everyday, do-their-homework, sucker friends. On May 15 I watched one walk across the stage and receive his diploma.
The situation has caused me to have an educational existential crisis. As one of those do-your-homework, pay-your dues types, I was horrified. What, exactly, was this process teaching him? He certainly wasn’t learning anything in the conventional sense of being able to articulate history or algebra or physics. It seemed that all he was learning was that there were meaningless hoops he had to jump through to get a piece of paper that everyone seemed to think he needed. Jumping through those hoops would get everyone off his back. What a thing to teach an 18 year old!
I have become fascinated by the question of what high school is for. What do we expect out of it? I have this sneaking suspicion that high school — four years of increasingly challenging English, social studies, science, and math — is itself a series of meaningless hoops. And as someone who wants all the education she can suck up and who has devoted much of her professional life to education, the thought makes me a little queasy.
It turns out that other people are beginning to think about this too. Lant Pritchett at the Kennedy School of Government published a study in 2014 that shows “no association between increases in human capital attributable to the rising educational attainment of the labor force and the rate of growth of output per worker.” The study attributes this shocking finding to three things: a perverse environment could have effectively penalized the attainment of educational capital; the marginal benefits of education could have been offset by an expanding workforce facing a stagnant demand; and educational quality could be so low that “years of schooling created no human capital.”
Let’s make those possibilities easier to understand:
1. Education-haters (hello, Republican presidential candidates?) don’t value education and don’t reward those who pursue higher education.
2. Too many graduates are competing for a relatively small number of positions, depressing wages for everyone.
3. Most horrifying of all, the low quality of schooling has created nothing of value for the workforce — so the workforce doesn’t reward it.
Yikes. Ricardo Hausmann, Harvard professor and director of the Center for International Development, writing about this study notes that only 15% of openings in the workforce are for entry level positions. Therefore, 85% of jobs require expertise learned on the job. That doesn’t look good for education.
Students know the educational system isn’t working. Indiana University’s High School Survey of Student Engagement shows that 66% of students are bored at some point every day and 17% of students are bored in every class. Layer on top of that the relentless testing and the seemingly meaningless assignments, and it is no wonder that schools are not inspiring students. What’s more, the school often seems to be working against the natural impulses of adolescents. We know adolescents need more sleep and are biologically inclined to late nights and late mornings, but we still start school at a time conveniently tied to the 1950s work day. We know teens are biologically wired to strongly identify with specific peer groups, but we treat them as if they are all the same. 
A number of companies I’ve worked for have had odd attendance policies, even for sales staff whose output is easily measurable. One company would require all sales people to check in at the inconveniently located office before heading out on the road to call on customers — and check in at the office at the end of the day. I used to laugh that they didn’t believe people were working if they couldn’t actually see them. It is a dated idea of work that is tied to the routine work of the factory and farm. The same characteristics — required hours of butts in chairs, volume of worksheets turned in, percentage correct on easily graded but essentially meaningless tests — are present in most schools. The “butts in chairs” measurement is a poor substitute for actually assessing the development of critical thinking skills.
As I’ve wrestled with what high school should be, I decided to ask people I respect. A number of them surprised me, and made me re-think my blind belief in education. Many thought that these two young men showed great enterprise and skill to find a way to make the hoops less onerous. So I developed a little survey to ask two questions:
1. What is high school a time for?
2. What should a high school diploma mean?
37% answered the “High School is a Time For” question with “explore ideas and begin to decide what interests you.” And another 26% answered “other,” which included (for the most part) some version of “all of the above.” A somewhat frightening 30% answered with “learn to grind through homework.” Only 7% thought it was primarily for the development of social skills. This would be very disappointing to one high school student I know, who is bored, sometimes to tears, in high school, and who passionately wants someone to teach him how to be in the world. (I had 100 survey responses, and the survey is unscientific for sure. My academic adviser would be horrified. But still: interesting.)
Most of the respondents to the question about what a high school diploma should mean answered either “learn” (36%) or “think” (29%). Whatever high school diplomas mean these days, it is not that the recipient knows how to learn or think. Many of the smart grad students I’ve been exposed to recently — many of the people in general — are not critical thinkers and don’t know how to own their own learning. So, unscientifically, but interestingly, high school is not doing what we want it to do.
So kids are putting in their time. Showing up. Turning assignments in. Occasionally being inspired by a wonderful teacher. Sleeping in class or developing the practiced look of faux paying attention they will need for the meetings they will spend their professional life in. And, if this doesn’t work for them, finding a crafty way to get their piece of paper without all the fuss of showing up and doing the work.
So that I don’t end on a depressing note: let’s consider for a minute what four years of adolescence might look like if “school” were crafted to work with the students’ strengths instead of their weaknesses. It would involve lots of hands-on, very active work — maybe gardening, building things, doing service work — activities where they can learn in the context of real work. They wouldn’t have to spend all day crammed into a little desk, but would end the day physically tired from an engaging experience. They’d be encouraged to follow their interests and would have teachers that are creative enough to (and with the freedom to) find the math in the music lesson or the historical context in the romance novel. And they wouldn’t have to get up before noon.