Do Not Apologize

A few months ago I sat across from Annette Celette, liaison to the Louisiana TOPS program, and got a one-on-one tutorial about this free college tuition program that we've been muddling through with our first two high school graduates.  Annette's informational table and her wisdom was parked right next to my vendor table at the recent homeschooling conference in Covington, LA.  My husband happened to be there too so he was able to get all the answers to his questions straight from the unicorn's mouth, so to speak.

I couldn't help but compare how closely this one-on-one feedback resembled the give-and-take homeschooling allows our children.  My teenagers and I have been to meetings on TOPS.  We've been to the library for informational fairs on college applications and funding.  We've been to college visitation days where the instructor attempts to explain TOPS.  My husband and I have sat in an audience and listened to another liaison with the Louisiana TOPS program and we were encouraged to ask questions.  When we left the building, we remembered several other questions we had forgotten to ask.  In the case of my daughter, we've had a counselor as our go-between.  I ask a question. Kayleigh asked the counselor. The counselor explains it as best she can.  Kayleigh explains it back to me as best she can.  Something is lost in translation. It's been more of a hit-and-miss style of information overload.

That weekend, in Covington, we were privileged to have a perfect homeschooling one-on-one teaching lesson.  Thank you, Annette.

There were plenty of lull times in the day I was able to connect with Annette.  There was plenty of downtime in which I remembered another question that needed to ask.  That being taken care of, there was one thing Annette told me that I will forever remember.  She addressed with sadness the way parents come to her and apologize, yes...apologize for the fact their child has decided college is not for him or her.  Instead, they tell her, their child has chosen to go to a vocational/technical school.

"If they only knew the demand and need we have right now for high school graduates to go this route.  There is nothing to apologize for.  We need more students commited to vocational/technical careers.  If anything, the hardest thing we see is in getting students to commit to working."  This is a paraphrase from Annette but I will always be grateful to her for giving this parent the support she needed to depart from the ideal and look at the reality.

It's time for America to wake up and realize that college is not for everyone.  On a hat-tip from Lissa, I read through this wonderful piece by a college professor of literature: In the Basement of the Ivory Tower.  While his writing curves and dips, uprights and straightens, I was still able to follow his opinion as it curved and dipped, uprighted and straightened.  He's all for higher learning, as most of us are, but he understands the reality vs. the dreamland.  He packs a punch with this quote:

"America, ever-idealistic, seems wary of the vocational-education track. We are not comfortable limiting anyone’s options. Telling someone that college is not for him seems harsh and classist and British, as though we were sentencing him to a life in the coal mines. I sympathize with this stance; I subscribe to the American ideal. Unfortunately, it is with me and my red pen that that ideal crashes and burns."

I sympathize too.  I also subscribe...passionately...to the ideal. But I'm an ever-idealistic American which gives me the right (said tongue-in-cheek). While parenting took me into a fanciful dreamland, it also made me look reality in the eye.  I saw life anew through the eyes of my children.  An approaching train, instead of slowing down my day to an aggravating crawl, became a delightful choo-choo train filled with animals that talked and treats for little boys and girls.  Instead of leaning my head on my hand in boredom; we counted cars, watched the wheels spin in amazement, and waited anxiously for the little red caboose at the end.  My toddler waved at the conductor and I waved too. We were sad to see it journey on down the tracks leaving us far behind in its wake.   

Then the toddler became a teenager who could drive, and the choo-choo became a train again.

I was (and am) constantly being made to recognize the reality of life while trying to pause long enough to see the ideal.

I was reminded of Annette's words to me at a banquet we attended some weeks ago in Baton Rouge where my oldest daughter was presented a scholarship for a winning essay.  In his speech State Secretary of Labor Tim Barfield commented at the drastic need for careers in the technical/vocational fields and at the sad demise of apprenticeships that were once the backbone of American employment.  As the means that gave my husband a degree in instrument technology and then in the field of analyst, I wanted to applaud him on the spot.  Here is a man with a law degree who does not snub his nose at the working man but, rather, sees the remarkable opportunity out there for well-trained, well-informed workers in all field of life.

While I am proud, so proud, of my academically-inclined, college-bound daughter, I am by no means less proud of my son who works with consistant dedication during the day and attends a community college at night.  This is the child who got my inexperience as a teacher during his formative years.  This is the child who escaped my artifical-school-at-home whenever he could and snuck outside.  This is the child I would search the neighborhood for and find hunting for eel, snakes and turtles in the ditches before the truancy officer found him.  This is the child who blew up antbeds with firecrackers and who shot at mosquito-hawks dragonflies with his BB gun. 

This is the same child who wakes up at the crack of dawn every morning and goes to work.  This is the same child who gets called out to work on a Sunday morning, a day early from his vacation week, goes on call, follows it by Mass in a neighboring town, and still finds time to sneak in an hour or two of fishing before coming home due to a storm.  This is the child God has given me who can build anything, fix anything, and who makes me laugh.  He is not, however, the one who will prepare my taxes, fill out my medical forms, and oversee my estate (such as it is) when I am too old and feeble-minded to do it myself.  Rather, his sisters tend to be the paperwork gurus in this household. Then, maybe again, he will.  He has the know-how. 

I often think of how destitute our society would be if all we had were doctors and lawyers and professors academic scholars.  Then there would be no Gibson boys to do everything else.  The Gibson girls are nice, but the Gibson boys carry their weight...literally.

And I realize that is how God planned it for my family.  If the family works together, we all win.  It's a win-win situation.  If everyone contributes to the family, we, as a community at large, benefit. Even better, if we all contribute to it as the body of Christ we're sanctified. 

"For as the body is one and hath many members; and all the members of the body, whereas they are many, yet are one body."  ~ 1 Corinthians 12:12

Comments

[Paula in MN]

Well said. My dd25 received her RN last December, and all her classes were through a local Community College. My niece (24) graduated last month with her Surgical Tech license, and all her classes were taken at a Vocational school. My first degree was a combination of classes at a Community College and a Technical school. All three of us had jobs before graduation! Community College, Technical or Vacational School, traditional 4 year College, they all serve a purpose.

[Kimberly]

I agree, Cay. Well said. I, too, have seen the different "bends" each family may have. In my own, my father was the first to earn a college degree. I was the first to pursue a master's. My sister is now a Ph.D. My brother? He is like your eldest son. He gets up every day and goes to work, finding time to fix everything...and fish.

He was, and still is, marching to his own drumbeat. He is happy. He is successful. He is his own person, and it took my dad a long time to realize that because he was always taught that higher education in the form of a college degree was the only way to be successful.

I, too, hope that apprenticeships and the likes return to our society's view of career prep.

Oh, and isn't Annette wonderful? :)

[Brenda]

Well said, I must say. My husband taught technical classes for years at a local community college here in our home town,and retired recently. He worries still about the lack of men and women going into the technical/vocational fields and what that will mean for our future here in this country. All three of my children have college degrees, but still need to find jobs in their fields, it would have been easier if they had gone the technical/vocational route, however, that wasn't their "bent". (They are all gifted artists.)