Quote:
Originally posted by DeltAlum
Your first point quoted above brings back the thoughts of one of my favorite professors (A fairly young, newly minted PhD in English Lit). His feeling was that it would be much better to send people off for a couple of years of military or community service before college. His reasoning was that people coming out of high school, for the most part, have no real skills at living on their own, don't understand time management, and in many cases have no idea what they want to do in the future. He felt that the added skills and maturity forced by two years of service before college would not only make for better students, but also serve as a way to weed out in advance those who may not really belong in higher education. The flunk out and drop out rates were fairly high. Most "big" schools had "flunk out" courses in the freshman year that they used to clear out the not ready for college students.
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This reminds me of discussions of alcohol use and abuse by college students, which often focused on the fact that many college freshman don't have it together when they go away to school and, as a result, get there and act a fool with alcohol, sometimes with terrible consequences.
Just like I don't think it's the responsibility of universities or student organizations or anyone else to teach people how to be responsible with alcohol, I also don't think it's the responsibility of the military or any other form of mandatory service to teach these kids how to be adults or develop the skills needed to live on their own. That's the job of parents.