Add two years to high school, offer stem classes. They graduate without all the debt.

[jtuck004]

So if there are no jobs, they are no worse off. I don't like that the liberal arts gets short shrift in this, because that sort of narrow-minded approach is partly what has led to serfdom for an increasing number. While this offers at least some an opportunity to avoid what might amount to a debt that will follow you to the grave, it still leaves millions of unemployable people who will increasingly be needing relief in a time when there is only sympathy for banks. But maybe they could use it at night.

It shifts costs, taking it from the state as a whole vs making individuals go into such huge and crippling debt.

What interested me is that this has similarities to the employee-owned Mondragon Cooperatives in Spain. They were under a dictator when a priest appeared around 1953. To free them from that control he taught them an engineering curriculum but also the Rochdale Principles for Coooperatives.

They went to work at local businesses, but found that with their new knowledge it was too limiting. So they borrowed money from friends and neighbors and bought a paraffin stove manufacturing business. Now they have their own bank, hospitals, university, and a several spinoff businesses, and a better unemployment rate than the rest of Spain. Mondragon just inked an agreement with the Steel Workers here to explore possibilities.

While there are some real differences between their culture and ours, it does seem that some training in how to work together for the betterment of you and your neighbors shouldn't just be limited to the kids of the wealthy. They used to do that in 1930, but it seems to have fallen out of favor.

Anyway...

http://www.ptechnyc.org/site/default.aspx?PageID=1

[daleanime]

1. Improved education would help solve many of our problems....

why do you think public schooling is under attack?

[NYC_SKP]

2. I dunno. I support more time, reject "all kids go to college" and we need more STEM, but only if it

only if STEM includes arts, music, fashion, cooking, which it absolutely should.

Any good chef or painter, or musician will tell you that their craft involves Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.

[JVS]

3. Even kids who liked school chomp at the bit to be out at 18

[Sherman A1]

4. Agreed

Yet, how it is structured can be tweaked and if everyone is in the same system, then it will just be the way things are done. It can be made to work, might require some creative thought and planning, but sounds like an idea that could use some research.