Most kids act as though doing well in school is near the bottom of their list of priorities. They do the minimum, just enough to get by. Teachers and parents keep telling them it's important to study and get good grades because their futures depend on it. But the kids know better. Doing well in school doesn 't make much of a difference.
When I went to high school, my parents kept after me to take the right courses. And they told me to work hard and get good grades so I could get into college. That was good advice. Getting into college was a serious, competitive business in those days. Now this is true only for the tiny percentage of students who want to go to highly selective colleges. The rest of the students who want to go to college will be able to find schools willing to admit them, no matter how poorly they've done. Lack of money, not lack of achievement, is the only barrier.
Doing well in high school is even less important for students going directly from high school to work. Employers complain all the time about the quality of graduates that high schools are turning out. The kids don't have basic skills. They can't think and solve problems. They can't do the work. But when it comes to hiring, employers pay less attention to high school records than colleges do. They don't ask what courses students took or what grades they got; a high school diploma is good enough. The kids who have done their best in high school have about the same chance of landing a job as the ones who just put in time. And they probably get the same starting salary.
Perhaps this system was intended to create a level playing field -- if what kids learn in high school doesn't really count in getting into college or getting a job, no one can be disadvantaged. But the fact is everyone is hurt: schools, colleges, employers and, most of all, students. Letting people know that their efforts won't matter is a good way of making sure they don't try very hard.
We could learn something from the Japanese. They used to have all the problems we now have: Students didn't work hard in school, and when they got out into the work force, employers complained that they were poorly prepared, incompetent. You remember -- those were the days when "Made in Japan" meant junky. The Japanese tried everything - just like us - and none of it worked. And then they came up with a system that makes how well you do in school count.
Japanese high schools now play a very important part in helping graduates get their first jobs. In fact, over 75 percent of young Japanese going into the work force right after high school use placement services at their high schools to find jobs (in comparison with under 10 percent of U.S. high school students). In a recent article in the American Journal of Sociology (May 1989), James E. Rosenbaum of Northwestern University and Takehiko Kariya of the Japanese National Institute of Multimedia Education describe how the Japanese link success in school with employment.
Under the Japanese system, businesses have formal arrangements with high schools to fill their entry-level jobs. The firms are looking for students who have done well in high school, and the schools provide the candidates. The firms give each school a certain number of slots to fill based on the quality of the school and the quality of the candidates it has provided in the past.
This might seem like an opportunity for foul play, but according to Rosenbaum and Kariya, it doesn't work that way. Schools that try to inflate grades or substitute a student with good connections for a good student run the risk of getting their employment slots cut. All concerned, including the students, understand the nature of the arrangement and respect it.
This system would not be entirely to our taste. American employers probably wouldn't be comfortable with turning over the identification of entry-level employees to local high schools, even if they had confidence in the quality of that school's graduates. And we'd certainly insist on a broader definition of student success than just good grades in academic courses -- we'd want to look at other kinds of achievement and at strengths of character. But as Rosenbaum and Kari ya point out, a system of this kind can create "strong incentives for high school achievement." It can send students a message about what counts and about how they can count on being rewarded for their efforts. It can give them hope and a reason to resist their peers who tell them they're fools for trying. And it makes a connection between what students do in school and the world of work -- a connection that is missing now, no matter what adults say.
All this should be obvious because we consider this kind of connection important elsewhere in our lives. Parents are eager to teach their children that actions have consequences, and they reward behavior they want to encourage. Businesses operate on this premise when they offer their employees incentives for doing good work. But when it comes to schools, businesses act like Soviet-style economies: They offer students who don't work just about the same incentives and rewards as those who do.
Changing this arrangement would not be difficult. It's time for employers and other adults to start helping students connect success in school with success in the "real world" - not just by telling kids but by showing them.