Nothing ends faster than a scholarly history book.
This is certainly a terrible shame. This not only allows junior scholars to ignore previous scholarships and try to reinvent the wheel, but also means that alternative methods, sources, and conceptual and explanatory structures are often considered outdated and therefore ignored.
A quarter of a century ago, Harvey J., a leading historian of literacy. Graf published an interesting study of the trajectories that young Americans in four distinct historical eras navigated during the complex transition to youth.
Conflicting pathsWhich draws on about 500 published and unpublished autobiographies, diaries, memoirs and personal letters so that as they mature they capture the thematic experiences of young people, facing uncertainty, confusion and challenges in their diverse paths as young people reach adulthood.
The bias of current first-person sources limited what the graph could say about the poor and the working class and non-whites. Nonetheless, he was able to identify multiple ways of adulthood, as well as how individuals perceive their personal experiences and create their own unique, unique life stories.
Particularly intriguing was the curve of growing up, the erratic reality, and the sharp contrast between the myths and stereotypes of different cultures that established some ideological expectations that some young people’s lives adhered to.
His broad historical argument is threefold:
1. The transition to youth has always varied greatly along multiple lines; There has never been a uniform process of growing up.
2. In the last three centuries, social class, more and more, has come to shape the journey of adulthood, even as the significance of region, ethnicity and even gender has diminished.
3. Growing up has never been easier; It is always full of uncertainty, retrogression and intense stress. Assuming that growing up was once linear and non-stop was a grossly misleading historical myth.
Today, the path to maturity is at least as diverse, and certainly as complex, contradictory, and complex as ever before in American history. Classes remain vitally important, but so do the various intersectional identities that color young people’s opportunities, aspirations, expectations, and perceptions of their options, greatly influencing their emotions and moods, and defining the resources they can use and the support structure. They make important decisions in life.
In the last century, the United States, at the expense of the vast majority of the population, created a set of educational institutions that were supposed to facilitate the transition to adulthood, making it more uniform, predictable, orderly, and successful.
But published as a series of recently published reports:
- The country’s education-to-work pipeline is highly leaked, especially for people from low socio-economic backgrounds. Those who lack post-secondary education or training and a certificate are unlikely to get a good job.
- The process of securing a stable, well-paid, quality job now takes much longer than in the past, and usually does not happen until young adults reach their thirties, delaying marriage and home shopping and increasing the likelihood of various life problems. Disrupting a financially-protected adult transition.
- The rising cost of post-secondary education, limited access to high-quality workplace training, and the absence of extensive counseling and career navigation services reinforce persistent inequalities across gender, ethnicity, and color lines.
A study by the Brookings Institution, entitled “Breaking Employment Among Young Adults,” reports that about 60 percent of young people who face economic disability during adolescence have an average annual income of $ 19,000 or less.
Contributions to their problems include high prison rates, early childbearing and low levels of education. In contrast, the military service is strongly associated with upward economic dynamism, in part because of the support and benefits it offers, including job training, subsidized child care, tuition support, and health care – the kind of support services that can make a big difference. Reducing the poverty rate.
A series of reports from the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce on the Uncertain Path to a Better Job from a Young Man, emphasizes several necessary findings:
- The inequalities in educational attainment and access to high-quality training are “calcifying” class divisions, limiting upward mobility, and contributing to class annoyance.
- While the subject of advanced education, field of study, choice of degree or program, and attending college also contributes to opportunities, earnings and economic dynamism.
- Where more than six out of 10 Asian American men and white men in the workforce managed to get a secure, decently paid job, the figure was only 29 percent among Hispanic women.
So, what are the implications of this study for 2- and 4-year colleges? Among the Centre’s recommendations are:
- Improve career counseling and ensure that it is based on timely job market data.
- Offer credit-bearing courses in education and career planning.
- More equitable funding of educational and training programs.
- Introduce growing or stackable certificates, so that students can add their certificates over time.
- Expand the number of applied community colleges, career-centered bachelor programs.
- Implement a more seamless transfer process.
Other steps need to be taken, such as reviewing license and certification requirements.
In a recent opinion article, author of Ryan Craig College disrupted And A new U: fast + cheap alternative to collegeIt speaks against the overly aggressive licensing requirement that is often used to limit entry into modestly skilled but decent salary jobs and which has become a major obstacle to upward mobility.
The examples he cites are not only general skeptics, such as hair braiding or interior design, but various healthcare support roles such as physical therapist assistants, which currently require five courses in anatomy, physiology, exercise physiology, biomechanics, kinesiology, neuroscience. , Clinical pathology and behavioral sciences – although the supportive role is limited in helping patients to exercise and record their progress. As Craig notes, they can only perform those tasks under the direct supervision of a licensed physical therapist. Yet the cost of such a national program can exceed 100,000.
Craig’s take-away: In such cases, professional associations and colleges are imposing unnecessary degree requirements not to ensure safety but to build their own homes.
He concludes his essay with the hope that colleges will become more mission- and civic-minded and will not place institutional interests over student interests. Listen! Listen!
The path to adulthood has never been easier, but as it grows longer and longer, colleges must reconsider it. In place of parents Responsibilities Often, we think of those supervisory and protective obligations in narrow legal terms designed to minimize an organization’s potential liability in the event of a loss.
But the responsibility of caring for colleges must go beyond preventing harassment, assault, hedging or suicide. While directors or officers of a corporation have a fiduciary responsibility to pursue the best interests of their firm, teachers have a moral obligation to work in the best interests of their students. This means:
- Providing a highly supportive learning environment that prioritizes related, advice, counseling, counseling, complementary education support services and regular basic feedback from faculty members.
- Offering an education that goes beyond today’s Zen Aid and major needs, but promotes students’ overall growth, interpersonal, ethical and social as well as cognitive and prepares them for the demands and challenges of their careers and adult lives.
- Creating an education that gives students the opportunity to apply and create knowledge and engage in authentic, real-world tasks by themselves and as a team member.
Early in the post-World War II era, becoming an adult was a one-time, one-time, unchanging, once and for all event. Today, on the contrary, it is a protracted process, filled with false beginnings, reversals, pitfalls, stumbling and lots of trials. It is a process without a well-defined roadmap or widely accepted rules. For parents and young people alike, this is a confusing, stress-ridden process where there is a high probability of the train breaking down.
In this highly ambiguous, uncertain environment, it is more important than ever to remember the old English roots of faculty words. Teacher. ঐ words, tcanIt means to show, to point out, to warn and to persuade, in other words, to support, guide and advise.
In your research, be an expert, an expert and a professional. But as an instructor, be a mentor and make sure your classes are about growth as well as content.
Steven Mintz is a professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin.
