Kara David, a 2011 graduate from BV West and former Spotlight writer/editor, has been awarded for her February 2011 staff editorial on how high school prepares students for the future. David has been nominated for National Story of The Year by the National Scholastic Press Association (NSPA).
Here is her story:
(from February 2011)
As my senior year is speeding by and the choices for colleges get more and more narrow, I’m stuck asking myself the big questions. I try to reflect on where I have grown in the past four years at BV West and what areas I want to grow in in the future. I contemplate colleges, weighing their pros and cons to try to make the best decision for me personally. I don’t think it is a stretch to say many seniors have been in my shoes, unsure and confused about their future at some point this year one way or another.
While I stress about getting enough scholarship money to go to my dream school, I am equally worried that I might make the wrong decision and end up somewhere I don’t belong. All of my concerned thoughts are focused on where I will go and once I get there, what I will do. It wasn’t until I was doing some research on potential majors that I realized that maybe my concern is placed in the wrong area.
It’s possibly too bold to say, especially in a student newspaper, but I honestly question the readiness of BV West students in going to college. In fact, I really don’t think high school is preparing us for college that much at all. I consider myself fortunate because I am a student in the Blue Valley School District so I know when I say that students at BV West aren’t ready, nationwide there are many high school students worse off.
The reason I question our preparation for college is because I found articles with headlines such as “Ten Majors that Weren’t around Ten Years Ago” or “Twenty Jobs that Won’t be around in 2020.” These articles caught my attention because if the job market is changing so rapidly, I question the pace of our curriculum changes. Technology, cultural shifts, and changing demographics combine to create new career fields all the time, yet our courses have not made enough major changes in the past ten years to compensate for this new job market or predict the job market in years to come. If teachers are still using resources they made when they first started teaching, they are doing their students a disservice. And if textbooks and additional reading supplements are still informing students of the same material they did twenty years ago, they aren’t truly preparing students for what they will encounter when they step out of college.
Now I’m not trying to harp on teachers or our school district’s lesson plans. I’m only trying to make the point that old methods and old ways of thinking are starting to fizzle out. Students need preparation for today’s high-tech, fast-paced world. Just consider what major inventions have only appeared in the last ten years, the same amount of time that BV West has been open. iPhones, iPods, iPads, iTunes, Facebook, YouTube, Wii, and Twitter- all exist ten years or less (Washington Post). These are huge markets and those who created them are billionaires. American society is radically changed by these inventions and this mass-media society changes everything, everything except American schools.
While I think it is important for students to appreciate our history, we have to have a good grasp of what is coming in our future, too. Majors such as “nanotechnology, e-business/e-marketing, computer game design, forensic accounting, and human computer interaction” have all started in colleges across the nation (Fastweb.com). Then there are new jobs too, such as a “Social Media/Online Community Manager” that builds on the use of social media such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Or there is an “Online Advertising Manager” that works for content sites and tracks ads’ performances on the Internet. (Kiplinger.com) In fact, the top ten jobs in 2010 didn’t even exist in 2004. “To really check out how fast society is growing and changing, check out the “Did you know” video series online.
My point is we have experienced the most changes in technology in the past decade than ever before. This change opens up new potential careers and destroys old ones. I think teachers nationwide need to take this into account when preparing their students for the future. I have less than four months left at BV West, but if I wanted to go into a recently created major, I would start out knowing absolutely nothing. Let’s join the technology bandwagon and kick-start students into the knowledge necessary to make it in this crazy changing world.