We need to get an education

     The rising costs of going to college is getting a lot of attention these days. A story ran earlier this week about how it now costs $60,000 a year to attend Sarah Lawrence. But then, how many people do you know who went to Sarah Lawrence. I come from Manchester, where more people were familiar with Sara Lee.
     What's interesting to me in the current debate is how many ways we find to miss the point.
     Someone, please, point out that the cost of not being educated is higher than anything you spend in cash, whether you go to community college or Harvard.
     And education is not about getting a job. Trade school is about getting a job, but American snobbery being what it is, let's not go there; let's just talk college, please. That's what high school counselors do, and if you want to talk trade schools, like vocational tech, we have to call it something else so it does not sound so middle class, blue collar.
     Personally, I am a champion of (dare I say this?) the European structure of education, in which German students, for example, start out in elementary grades getting basics. But around Grade seven, there is a fork in the road, one leading to academia and what we think of University courses, and the other leading to more mechanically aligned schooling. Trades, we would call it, but engineering, to a certain level, might be one of these courses.
     The difference is, Europeans seem to have a healthier respect for this work. There is no high road versus low road. The idea, the point, is to match the student's educational path to interests, talents, skills, and lastly, perhaps, intelligence.
     Many years ago, my teacher wife came home from a continuing education class with great enthusiasm for a new way of looking at meeting needs of students. Instead of forcing students into some mold -- and the labels that the public tends to apply -- the idea was that intelligence is not just one thing. There are multiple intelligences, some having to do with mechanical ability, manual dexterity, spatial cognition -- like that.
     In short, the guy who figures out how to fix something under a car has an intelligence that is just as valuable in many ways as the doctor who opens up a patient.
     Somewhere after World War Two, we got the idea in America that people who went to college were better than those who don't, and therefore, the college grads should be paid more. In some cases, maybe so.
     But the idea of a college degree as an end to higher pay, or prestige, has left us behind the rest of the world. We are not teaching our kids things they need for the future.
     In a recent international science test, American students came in 17th, behind Finland (1st), Japan (2nd), Canada (5th), Poland (13th), Estonia, Slovenia and Hungary.
     Americans kids come in 25th in math.
     Must be something wrong with our approach.
     Maybe we emphasize just getting through college so we can get that higher average paycheck. But the student debt is now reaching close to $60,000 per student on graduation. Advanced fields will leave you in debt of as much as a quarter million dollars.
     We might be better off if we valued education for the sake of education, and we could start by paying teachers better. Good ones make it fun, so kids stay engaged, stay in school. Oh, yeah -- our dropout and illiteracy rates are among the highest in the industrialized, modern world.
     Finland might be on to something. Finland seeks out the top 10 percent of college graduates and pays them a premium to teach. There, teachers are paid on a level equal of doctors and successful lawyers and business executives.
     Finland also has the highest standard of living consistently in periodic comparisons. Higher that the U. S. every time.