Forced to Pick a Major in High School - New York Times

Forced to Pick a Major in High School - New York Times: "Two years ago, Akelia applied to the magnet program%u2019s law and public safety academy because she wanted to be a lawyer. But after finding many of the legal cases boring and hard to relate to, she was unable to take classes in other fields because she was locked into her specialization."

At first I was thinking this might be a good idea for some students, but as this quote shows all they are doing is following the European model. I spent quite some time in Europe and one of the things I've noticed was the enormous amount of time, money and energy they spent on hobbies.

Europeans tend to be very hidebound in their thinking. "This is the way it's always been done." Even being a non-conformist there is very structured, I wish I had taken more street pictures showing how all the "free-thinking" kids were the same city to city. Being anti-x is not the same as being different.

The problem here is that it isn't going to help. With the loss of pretty much everything outside of college track there really isn't much choice here. They dropped shop and home ec a long time ago.

This is going to be terrible.

We have to take control of our children's education, it's too important to leave it up to the professionals.

The most important thing about learning is making it interesting, which is very different from entertaining.
• One great way to learn electronics is to get a Ham radio license and start building your own antennas and radios.
• Want to learn small engine repair, which scales nicely to larger engines, is to grab an old dead lawnmower at a garage sale and fix it up.
• If business is something you want to learn you could turn that lawnmower repair experience into real summertime business. Setup the corporation, hire employees: someone to gather lawnmowers from yard sales, someone else to repair them and someone to sell them.
• want to learn archeology there may be a dig not all that far away from your home.

The possibilities are endless.