There they were again this year, justifiably excited teenagers in caps and gowns finally making it across the stage in front of you, their proud and somewhat relieved parents.
Graduated at last. You wondered if you’d see this day.
And for them: “School’s out for summer, school’s out forever.”
Well, not quite.
In Canada in 2010, 43.9 per cent of young adults aged 15 to 29 were still involved in “education.”
About 15 per cent of high school grads will move immediately into a university program.
Others will begin pursuing careers that do not require a university degree but do require lots more learning: automotive service technicians, accounting clerks, carpenters, dental assistants and electricians, to name a few.
All those options will require more school of one kind or another, plus long term on-the-job training, technical non-degree college courses or apprenticeship programs sometimes lasting four to five years.
According to StatsCan’s Education Indicators in Canada, employment prospects generally increase with education levels attained.
For secondary school graduates, the employment rate is around 72 per cent; for post-secondary graduates who took some further training 78 per cent and for graduates of full programs at colleges or universities near 82 per cent.
But that was before the “economic downturn,” continued reports of which have shaken employer confidence about taking on new employee trainees, many of whom now have to go back to school to increase their employability.
So how well does a high school graduation certificate prepare your kids for all this new learning which they hope will lead to economic independence?
Some high-school performance indicators have emerged as being predictive of both high school graduation and college or university readiness. Those factors include attendance patterns, course success, on track-to-graduation status, course choices, attitudes to learning, activities beyond the classroom and thoughtfulness about next steps after high school.
Beyond that, the Conference Board of Canada has done a useful job of identifying skills beyond content knowledge needed as the basis for career accessibility and further educational development.
Kids who have been well prepared by their secondary schooling will have learned to communicate, to read and understand information presented in a variety of forms (e.g. words, graphs, charts, diagrams), to write and to speak so others pay attention and understand.
They will have become adept at managing information, and locating, gathering and organizing new information using appropriate technology and information systems.
They will have learned to think and solve problems and to evaluate them based on facts.
The biggest change in how high school classrooms, especially senior classrooms, are organized is that today’s grads learn to work productively in groups — to collaborate.
Lifelong learners will need to be good at understanding and working within the dynamics of a group, contributing to a team’s purpose and generally being useful.
The world after high school has become more demanding in terms of its expectations, not just in terms of content knowledge, but in terms of kids having developed positive attitudes about learning new stuff. And then more new stuff after that.
None of this means that modern secondary education has sacrificed content in pursuit of learning processes and skills.
Quite the contrary. Check the specifications for today’s Grade 12 courses, examinable or not, and see how much of it you understand.
What this does mean is that today’s high school grads, having finished 13 years of basic training, will need to carry the skills and attitudes they’ve acquired into what skeptics about contemporary teaching and learning processes love to call “the real world.”
And that “real world” will expect today’s grads to be ready — a different kind of ready than the one my generation faced.
So frame that hard-earned Dogwood certificate and hang it on your wall. The good news is that the true fun of learning is just beginning.
Geoff Johnson is a retired superintendent of schools
