I smiled this week upon seeing beautiful teenagers of all shapes, sizes, colors and styles — radiant in the morning sun — emerging from buses and cars to begin a new year at Milton High School. My youngest daughter, a freshman now, jumped from my car to join the group.
Such fresh potential in kids all across our state! They are our bright future.
Of course, the American future is cloudy now, what with our stifled economy and rampant joblessness. Maybe we really are in decline, but today I remain optimistic.
I’ve been visiting several colleges around the country, learning of exciting new areas of study and breakthroughs in research brought about by amazing professors and dedicated students. I left imagining a wonderful future of well-educated, well-adjusted citizens working to solve local and world problems through various disciplines, often in science, technology and engineering, but also in education, business and humanities.
In fact, despite poor press about colleges — especially astronomical tuition and funding cuts — I still believe in the transformative power of American higher education. I’m especially proud of our Georgia colleges and universities. The more I learn about the depth and variety of studies, the more hopeful I become. Even smaller state colleges successfully engage promising students in often specialized fields not always found at larger universities. I’ve learned more by exploring www.GAcollege411.org, an excellent college and career navigational tool.
I also feel positive when nearly every day I read AJC stories of interesting college programs, leadership efforts by college presidents and remarkable achievements by current students. I recently learned the Georgia Board of Regents is trying to find ways to help more students graduate. What a worthy goal for students seeking a degree and Georgians looking for a return on educational investment. The first step should be to cut college costs. You can’t graduate if you can’t afford to go!
Then there are the Georgia technical colleges — a neglected path for many kids, but a worthwhile one for students seeking occupational skills and necessary knowledge for moving up in a given field. In fact, I wish our Georgia high schools would do more to help kids gifted in “hands on” areas to engage in apprenticeships with master craftsmen/craftswomen. These students could then feed right into the technical college system, which would ready them for the workplace.
Every year, shiny new batches of young people enter our high schools, ripe for the opportunity to learn and grow. They depend upon stable, mature, caring parents and compassionate, learned, effective teachers.
Of course, in a perfect world, they’d all get this, but they don’t. Still, we have to try our best not to give up on them, but to find ways in the earlier grades and throughout high school to keep them on a productive path.
Then when they enter our colleges, they can really soar.
Veronica Buckman lives in Milton. Reach her at vrbuck01@aol.com.
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