The education perplexity

I have been to a few conferences/conventions/workshops lately and that along with proposed budget cuts to education have gotten me to thinking. I am trying to wrap my mind around the problem to try and further define what is happening. In my blog postings, I am "talking out loud" if you will and doing some processing. At this point I do not mean for my postings to be comprehensive.

There are a great deal of people who feel that the way we educate our students is going to be changing. They feel that education is going to go online. I do not know at what age/grade level this would occur. I think for some students, more specifically those that are college bound, online might be the wave of the future. (Except with lab work. I've had students have specimens sent to them that they had to dissect or labs to perform and were lost.) However today I gave my students an assignment they had to do on the computer. I have not heard so much complaining from them in such a long time. "I don't like to read." "I can't read this." "Why do you have to give us this kind of assignment?" and gripe and grumble. Clearly this is not an option for all.

Another point to consider is only about 20 some percent of jobs out there require a bachelors degree or higher. Not all students are going to be college bound. Some students will go on to a tech school and want to have specific training for their career. One option might be if they want to cut money for education, shorten the number of years of mandatory school and have students enroll in prepratory, tech schools or college. You can start flipping burgers at age 16 and for many teenagers, that is all they want to do. This would probably increase the amount of college loans by two years for those students who do want to go on to college.

I don't think there is going to be an answer that everyone is going to like. It would be nice to come up with an answer that was most logical and fiscally responsible but when politics is involved--will that ever happen?