Little Fanfare

With little fanfare the once much publicized plan to require high school students to pick majors went away today; this year it will no longer be required. This also goes to show once again that education in Florida is a little bit like the weather, if you wait long enough it will change. Unfortunately to often the people dictating the changes are far away from the classrooms and have a very limited idea of what schools, children and education needs and even more unfortunate is schools, children and education suffer for it.

The high school major idea didn’t cause much damage but many of the ideas that come down the pipeline from the state often have dramatic and unimagined consequences. The F-CAT introduced an era of high stakes testing which has seen schools exchange creating well rounded students for students who can take just one test. Increasing the graduation requirements has led to the dumbing down of many classes. The list could go on and on.

Picking majors sounds good right? It could give kids a bit of direction, though at fourteen most of them only want directions to the mall. If only the powers-that-be would take some direction and stop meddling in education. They often do so to it’s detriment.