Public Intellectual Essay
April 27, 2002
As I am now the epitome of the
slacking senior – and am also someone who never paid much attention to his
collegiate studies – I have a unique perspective with which to view the PSEO
program. I do not blame PSEO for my own
failures in college, however I am worried that there are hundreds of students
walking in similar shoes to my own.
Therefore, it is my desire to give voice to an issue adversely affecting
Minnesota’s public schools, Minnesota’s fine colleges, and as a result, the
students themselves.
When I began my time at Bethany, it
was as if for the first time I was truly being challenged. It was just like entering a whole new universe
of ideas and points of view, of experiences and opportunities, and of risks
and rewards. As time past, and my academic
output became better and better, my thrill of college grew.
By my Senior year I was somewhat known
on campus. Hard not to be when you’re
the only liberal in a group of 1,000 card-carrying-conservatives. But at the same time, by some act of symbiosis,
we grew to like each other. I was excelling
academically at the collegiate level, but I was far from prepared for the
social aspect of dropping out of high school in order to attend college.
Nothing could have prepared me (at
age 16) for the challenges and difficulties of going to college. For, although I didn’t live on campus, I lived
on campus. And as any person whose
seen a National Lampoon’s movie knows, there are certain temptations on college
campuses that most of the sixteen year olds I knew wouldn’t pass up – so I
didn’t.
The end result being that I started
Macalester having gone through what its like in the first two years of college
– and therefore, had very little in common with my peers. From then on, my friends at Mac have always
been Seniors and Juniors.
Two years in at Macalester, I
decided it was time to leave the college life.
In a very natural way, I felt like I had been in school for four years,
and it was time to leave. On account of
the credits I accrued at Bethany, I was able to take a year and a half off from
school – and still graduate with the class I came in with.
I speak of all this for this simple
reason - of all the PSEO students I know, I gained the most from the program.
Which makes it even more ironic that I intend to show why the PSEO program
ought to be removed from education in the state of Minnesota.
It has been a long lasting debate
within education as to how to adequately challenge those gifted and talented
kids who appear to be struggling with public schooling.
One of Minnesota’s responses was PSEO
– a program designed to enable students to take college classes, on the dime
of the taxpayer, and for both college and high school credit. The depth to which this program has adversely
affected Minnesota’s schools will be covered later. But the real harm from PSEO is the impact on
emotionally unprepared students and the student bodies of the schools.
Not only does the program adversely
affect the students within PSEO, but it affects the students at both
institutions. First, there was certainly
a large population at Bethany that would have loved to have me gone. But more critically, high school students
stick out on college campuses – especially in the classrooms. And the traditional response by the high
school student is to try and prove themselves in the new environment – the
result of which is an even worse environment.
No college student wants to be shown up by a high school kid.
Furthermore, these students are
attending their classes for free – while the rest of their peers fork over
substantial amounts of money just to sit in the classroom. It is insufficient to say that for most, the
social environment is one of extreme hostility and resentment.
This program also greatly affects
the student bodies at high schools. When
I made the decision to attend Bethany, my speech coach pleaded with me to stay:
she said she’d seen too many of her better competitors leave for college and
not come back. Although that was a
personal example of seemingly little importance – the underlining message in
what she said is clear. PSEO fuels a
“brain drain” in high schools: the “gifted and talented” kids are too often
ignoring their roots in high school, and being consumed by the college
life. Although this didn’t happen fully
to me – I watched several close friends lose all interest in their high school
experience. The result is a student body
whose “student leaders” had fled.
When one damages the dynamics of a
student body, one damages the entire school.
The more progressive school districts have an active student body, who
organize, unite and lead each other – and therefore make the school districts
accountable for their actions.
PSEO removes potential leaders from
their natural environment, and places them in such a new situation that they
obviously lose ties to their high school.
I believe this to be one reason why many Minnesotan schools lack an
active student body.
This is hard enough for the growth
of a public school. But keep in mind,
the public schools are paying for this to happen. The Minnesota government funnels funds from
the education budget into the PSEO program to pay for the student to
enroll. The opportunity costs for each
class taken are astonishing. These funds
could be stretched far and thin if allocated to public schools.
Clearly, the colleges are adversely
affected by the PSEO students. Although
my professors loved my ability to stir a classroom up, it was clear that they
were somewhat perturbed to have to educate high school students. Which raises one of the fundamental problems
of the PSEO program – why should it be the professors responsibility to educate
high school students? Isn’t that the
fundamental reason for having a public school system?
Conclusion
PSEO adversely affects the
students, the high schools and the colleges in Minnesota. First, we must seriously ask ourselves
whether or not 16 and 17 year olds are emotionally prepared to begin college. Second, we must realize that we are taking
the gifted and talented kids out of their high schools and placing them in a
hostile environment. This has a
detrimental effect upon the student bodies at both institutions. Third, Minnesota taxpayers are paying for
high school kids to go to college. These
funds should be re-allocated back to their original destination: the public
schools of Minnesota.
It is time to remove the Post
Secondary Educational Options program from education in the state of Minnesota.