Yaolee Chen
English 306
Essay Two
Maurenn Newline
The
School-to-Work Program
The world is changing, almost all the job
markets today require the employees to have the knowledge of a specific subject
that the students can not obtain that kinds of knowledge unless they go outside
of the classrooms. I, as a translator,
has greatly benefited from a Career Guidance Course in the first year of my
community college education in Riverside.
The course encourages me to participate a conference of the American
Translator Association in San Diego in 1993.
What I think the Guidance Course did insufficiently is that the schools
shall pay the students for joining to the real job markets because it pays in a
long run. In my case, the college shall
have paid me 200 dollars to take the Translator’s License Examination in the
year I attended to the Career Guidance Course.
One must go outside the classrooms to
start a career goal. I was born and
lived in Taiwan, where I have learned to read and to write the Chinese
language. I had decided to be an
English-Chinese translator when I was sixteen.
The first year I came to the Riverside Community College, the Guidance
class wanted me to file a report for my educational goal. After weeks of my research and the
counseling with the people who worked in the career center, I finally filed my
short-term-goal, which was to participate the conference of the American
Translator Association, in San Diego, in the November of 1993, the year I took
the Guidance class.
Without my family support, my career
would have not yet started. The
conference held for 4 days. I drove my
father’s Yugo 84’. The distance was 100
miles away, from my house to the Princesses Hotel in San Diego, where the conference
was held. It took 200 miles for a
round-trip each day. But I had to keep
the driving going on for 4 days because I did not have the money for the
hotels. Luckily, I had a Yugo to drive,
or I would have no idea how my trips were going to make.
The conference was marvelous. More then
150 languages were spoken in the conference.
There was a schedule for the translators who came to the conference. The schedule divided the conference into
several groups. Around ten to twenty
different divisions for the world’s major languages, for examples, French,
Germany, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, and the other
languages, like Kurd, Greek, Taiwanese, Korean, and Japanese, what are not the
world’s major language, are all included by the Association. I was often proud of myself to have a
special gift that I can communicate with the local people and I can reach to
the places wherever I shall be sent to in both China and Taiwan. But then I found how small my energy really
is. There were several separate
sections to meet the translators in a same time. Each translator could go to only one section, according to his or
her own choice, because of the time restricted. As for the section I chose to participate, a manger of the
American Broadcasting Company stood right in front of my seat, and he said that
he would pay eleven thousand US dollars for the translating a very short
section of Russian film into the US language.
And he said that there was other types of job, which needed to be done,
posted right by the door of the room where I set. And the requirement was – none-- only if one could do it.
On the last day of the conference, there
was an examinational opportunity for any people who wanted to get a
translator’s license. But it charged
200 dollars because the grading papers cost money. Two hundred dollars was quite a lot for me at that time. I didn’t even know how to make
a-ten-dollars’ bill by myself at that time, so I left the conference without
taking the most importance examination I would have taken for joining to the
conference. Years later, I took the
examination in Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles as soon as I got the federal loan
for being taking classes in Cal State San Bernardino. The examination was about to translate the two English essays
into the Chinese language, and the topics of the essays were focused on the
French history, which were about the Enlightenment Age of the 18th
Century. I actually had graduated from
the Riverside Community College in 1996 with my major in history. But I remembered nothing about the French
history except the name, Louis XIV. I
think I had lost a chapter while taking the history classes in the community college. Would not I have made it up in those years
of my college education if I had taken the examination the first year of my
RCC! So, the schools shall pay the
pension to students who join to the job markets.
Phyllis Schlafly in his article
criticizes the School-to-Work is an animal training program. Olson probably does not explain the image of
the School-to-Work program very well in her article. The School-to-Work program, she says in the Preface of her book,
page 7, “is not about those kinds of programs,” like sewing and cooking
for the girls, or working with large pieces of wood down the hall for the
boys. It “is the traditional academic
class, with its emphasis on learning that is disconnected from the learning’s
application” (Olson 7). She actually
values the higher education, and she says, in her book page 113, “Higher education must be a central player
in the School-to-Work movement. If
higher education is not involved, School-to-Work will not succeed.” Olson probably is not good at explaining her
idea. So, let me put it this way: The School-to-Work program is to help the
students to start a point for their career goals. The School-to-Work and the apprenticeship program are
different. The School-to-Work is a
guide light, which leads the high school students to finish a higher
education. But the apprenticeship program
that Phyllis Schlafy criticizes in his article are the type of training that
directly leads the high school students into the blue-color job markets. Olson actually hates to see the young people
choose the laborer for his life career when she hears a conversation of a
16-years-old boy, Chris, says, “… I can only work with my hands. I can’t work
with my mind” (Olson 29). But, Schlafly
has no idea what type of School-to-Work program Olson is really talking about
in here. The School-to-Work mainly does
not equal to the apprenticeship program because it promotes the motivation of
the students to finish a higher education; and it does not mean to be an animal
training program because, as I know, most of the programs require the students
to have a High School Diplomas or General Educational Certificates, and the
participants have to be 18-years-old, or older
<http://www.scsurveyjac.org, 24 April,
2003>.
A student usually knows better what to
study in school if she starts the career goal earlier. In my case, I would have studied the French
history for at least three semesters if I knew that kind of topics were going
to be on my exams for the translator’s license. The French history actually is on the Chapter 17 of the book, Western
Civilization Volume I, written by Learner, et. al. By the time of the final exam in RCC years
ago, the lecture was on the Chapter 16.
So, Professor Hemez left the Chapter 17 to be studied by the students
themselves during the Christmas Holidays.
When the next semester began, the professor turned the first few pages
of the book Volume II, and said, “I believe you gays have studied hard during
the break; so, let’s start from the Chapter 18.” And, I still wondered how I missed this chapter, the French
History, in my World History class with Profess Roomis. Well, two weeks before the final of the
class, Professor Roomis gave us a sheet about what to prepare for the final:
there were two questions, and the students only had to choose one for the final
exam. One was about the Western
Christian Civilization, and the other was about the Chinese History. As for me, the Chinese History was a piece
of cake; so, I escaped the studying on the French history, again.
So, one might ask if our educational
system getting wrong? Or, how could I
escape the chapter if I want to be a translator? The answer is, No. There were science major students,
non-history major students in my classrooms.
The professors cannot expect every student to learn everything. It is simply impossible. But as for me, the French history is
important because, by 1800, almost all the European documents were published in
Paris. What was important to me did not
always mean it was important to the other students.
Really, the necessity of my studying
French history comes from the experience outside of the classrooms. My point is that there is nothing wrong
about our current educational system.
There is too much knowledge in the world for the American students to
learn. A student must make a starting
point for his or her educational goal.
And a better saying about the reform is to spend more federal budges on
our educational department, particularly on the School-to-Work program.
Works Cited
http://www.scsurveyjac.org. “SOUTHERN
CALIFORNIA SURVEYORS
JOINT APPRENTICESHIP COMMITTEE:
Qualification”. From the web
side of CALIFORNIA APPRENTICESHIP COORDINATORS
ASSOCIATION. 24 April, 2003.
Olson, Lynn. The School-To-Work Revolution: How Employers and
Educators Are Joining Forces to Prepare
Tommorrow’s Skilled Workforce.
Reading, MA: Perseus Books. 1998.
Schlafly, Phyllis. “School-to-Work Will Train, Not
Educate”. Quoted in
Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum 7th
edition. ed. by Laurence
Behrens and Leonard J. Rosen. New York: Longman. 2003. 70-72