[Vision2020] North Idaho Adult High School

[Wayne Price]

YES!   YES!!!!   YES!!!!!!!!





On Oct 9, 2009, at 8:01 PM, Kenneth Marcy wrote:

> On Friday 09 October 2009 14:53:23 Wayne Price wrote:
>> I also think we are loosing [sic] a great opportunity here on the  
>> Palouse to
>> offer "education" to adult learners by not opening up the  
>> Universities
>> at night. We could very easily put together a night faculty and offer
>> quality education to those that want it at night, and not just in  
>> what
>> are considered "traditional" studies.
>
> Yes, classes taught during evening hours are a good idea. Yes, there  
> may be
> interests in, and markets for, classes in non-traditional subject  
> matters.
> Yes, more, if not entirely distinct, faculty members than the  
> present cohort
> would be required to succeed at offering many evening course sections.
>
> These concerns are not the point of this message, because the  
> recipients of
> most of these course-hours likely would be people already in the  
> educational
> system in one way or another. The point of this message involves  
> people who
> are not, but who would do better by being, part of an extended  
> educational
> system. I am writing about adults who may have graduated, or perhaps  
> they
> didn't graduate, from high school many years ago, and who have not  
> continued
> their educations in the many years since leaving school.
>
> I am writing about those adults who left high school 15 to 30 years  
> ago, and
> who have 15 to 30, or more, work years ahead of them before they can  
> or do
> retire. Those adults, often in families with school-aged children of  
> their
> own, are likely earning wages and incomes considerably below  
> average, and
> below the capabilities of those adults if they had up-to-date high  
> school,
> not to mention, trade school or junior college, educations.
>
> Societies change for various reasons, and with that change comes the  
> need for
> changed education requirements. Thirty years ago the IBM personal  
> computer
> did not exist. Twenty years ago the first pass through the  
> sequencing process
> for the human genome had not been completed. Ten years ago the  
> Soviet Union
> had not yet fallen. Each of these changes has had, and continues to  
> have,
> large affects in the lives of citizens of many countries all around  
> the
> planet. People who have not had any opportunity to study, or who  
> have failed
> to take advantage of opportunities to study, these changes likely  
> are not in
> as good a position to understand, to contribute to, or to take  
> advantage of
> the newer opportunities evinced by these events. Such people are  
> more likely
> to cause problems for others because of the understanding they lack.
>
> What is needed for at least some, perhaps many, of these individuals  
> is an
> opportunity to return to a school at the academic level of high  
> school, but
> with the social level of adults. I suggest that this situation might  
> be, in
> part, at least, remedied by a new high school, the enrollment of  
> which would
> be limited to adult individuals over age 21 who have been out of  
> high school,
> and likely outside any educational establishment, for some years. This
> institution might be a day school or a residential school or both,  
> and it
> could be either publicly funded or privately funded or both, perhaps
> depending upon which part of the curriculum is being considered.
>
> I think this community, in cooperation with the state, would do well  
> to
> consider the establishment and a long-term commitment to a new  
> educational
> institution called the North Idaho Adult High School, to be  
> established for
> the purpose of providing high school education to adults who have  
> not shown
> previously, or who can not now show, mastery of course materials and a
> curriculum sufficient to graduate from an accredited high school.
>
> (And just to be explicitly clear about this: I am not writing about  
> a cram
> school established just to allow passing the one-shot, one-exam,  
> GED. Yuck.)
>
>
> Ken
>
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