It’s perfectly reasonable to choose from among many diverse occupations.
Location makes a difference in these choices: students in desert communities don’t dream of becoming local fishermen.
For Whitewater, while there’s sure to be more than one career path, it’s practical and reasonable to contend that a university town should encourage a university education as part of an attainable, practical path.
It’s more than odd that in a city that’s put millions in public money into tech ventures (of whatever kind and merit), there’d be a lack of willingness to encourage lots of students to think about college and prepare accordingly.
There’s no judgment in this; it’s simply a practical goal aligned with our location.
It’s also aligned with the publicly-stated goals of our city, Community Development Authority, tech park, and school district to promote Whitewater as a tech-savvy, competitive community.
I’ve disagreed with public money for some of those goals, but no one disagrees that we’ve heard them time and time again from many public officials.
How odd, then, to hear that one of the explanations for the low ACT participation rate in our university town is that college isn’t for everyone.
Of course there are options, but if school administrators are now rationalizing low ACT participation in a city with a campus, of all places, that’s a sign of how badly the sales pitch for these test scores has gone.
Yesterday’s tech-savvy marketing contradicts today’s low test-rate rationalizations.
There’s a solution to all this – forget trying to sell results as though they were cheap products.
Tomorrow: Forget Selling.