Quote:
Originally Posted by Taualumna
Should jursidictions be extending middle school until Grade 10, and then streaming kids into various types of senior high schools for Grades 11 and 12? For example, if you want to go into the trades, you will attend trades training for your last two years. If you're interested in academics, you go to a traditional academic high school. They used to do this in Toronto (though the kids would start in Grade 9 rather than Grade 11)...many of the most academic/traditional high schools are Such and Such Collegiate Institute while the non-historically academic schools are Such and Such Technical School or Such and Such School of Commerce. Would that improve anything, you think?
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No.
There shouldn't be trade and academic tracks. Having honors courses and trade classes in high school are close enough to that. In my high school, there were kids bused to a trade school after lunch.
High schoolers can't predict their future. They may notice that they do well in trades versus honors courses, and they may even like that option. But how they perceive their future has a lot more to do with what they're presented with as options. Poor kids, kids with learning disabilities, kids who are bored in school, etc. will think this means that college and academic careers aren't options for them. Parents and teachers need to let kids know that their futures aren't set in stone at birth. And their futures may very well defy what they, and everyone around them, assumed to be their futures.