As always, I am fascinated with the responses and the unexpected directions any CC thread can take.
My own reactions to this speech included:
Have faith in yourself. And have faith in your child. True, college is not for everyone, but that doesn’t mean anyone needs to believe the label “Not College Material” when someone else applies it to you or to your child.
Don’t get stuck in the first college major or in your first attempt at college. life is rarely a straight line.
Our country and our colleges would be better served by finding ways to include rather than exclude people who are a little different.
Give back. Pay it forward.
On a side note, among those kids who are “not college material”, I am embarrassed to include my own less than positive beliefs about my best friend’s son. If you had asked me 10 (or even 5) years ago I would have said that he would never make it through college. He was a very late reader, never did a minute of homework, and had serious mental health issues as well as learning disabilities that were not diagnosed until 8th grade, when his parents’ very contentious divorce was well settled and he moved back in with his mom and step father. Somewhere in high school they found the right combination of meds, an IEP, and a good therapist.
He lived at home for two years of community college, transfered to an instate public university (one that gets some love here on CC), and just graduated with a great GPA and a job offer in four years. That’s four years total. None of the high school masters of the universe or their parents are aware of those invisible kids who plug along, finding success in their own ways and in their own time.
To quote Clark Griswold, “If I woke up tomorrow with my head sewn to the carpet I wouldn’t be more suprised than I am now.”