Is this as dumb as it looks? Because the Rahm Emanuel plan to deny diplomas to Chicago public school graduates who don't either immediately continue their education or join the military seems among the stupider ideas one could come up with.
The mayor spoke briefly about the plan at a town hall meeting downtown on Tuesday, and formally announced the new requirement Wednesday morning at Malcolm X College. He said part of being successful in life is having continued education after high school.
Starting with next year’s freshman class, in order to receive their high school diploma, all CPS students would have to show an acceptance letter to a four-year university, a community college, a trade school or apprenticeship, an internship, or a branch of the armed services.
So then, if a would-be graduate wants to do any other thing but those listed—whether that be spending a year traveling abroad or, rather more likely, getting a damn job, the new plan would be to deny them one of the key tools for being "successful in life" later on.
What idiocy is this?
“We need, at the public side, to help all our kids – regardless of their zip code, regardless of their background, regardless of what their family situation is – that expectation and support is provided to help kids go post-high school,” he said Tuesday evening.
That's great and all, but that's not the reality. Emanuel says schools will work with their students to attempt to get them scholarships and so forth, but even with scholarships pursuing higher education can be a hardship for many students, and many families. Declaring that "regardless of what their family situation is" you're going to nanny-state them into a community college, a groveling tiny-waged internship or ship them off to the army—because, after all, there’s no point in attempting anything else—is, at the risk of using a word we do not like to use here very often, elitist crap.
What if a student wants to join the family business? Does that count as an internship, or is that forbidden? I worked my first post-high-school summer as a union-wage janitor at the local zoo and loved every moment of it—is that path just gone, now, even as a temporary measure? What if a student simply needs to enter the workforce, as so many do, not just to support themselves but to support their families, or their siblings—is there going to be a scholarship for that, or are those students out of luck because the needs of their own family conflict with the declaration that they'll be getting more schooling, regardless. If after two years of such work they then are better positioned to continue their education, what further hoops must they jump through because they were stripped of high school graduate status the first go-round?
To be sure, the rules appear to say you have to show an acceptance letter to receive your diploma, but you don't have to go. So will the new Chicago springtime industry be applying to colleges you have no intention of attending? Here in California, at least, there are no "applications" to our community college: You simply enroll. It costs money. So will students be expected to pay out those fees before they get their diplomas?
Surely there must be some detail to this plan that the reporters have overlooked, because you will lose your diploma if you simply get a damn job after high school is, without such details, self-evidently stupid.