"There is a great potential for School-to-Work to have the most severe impact on minority youngsters, who will be taught they should not aspire to loftier goals than cleaning tables or toting luggage for the elite."
In a speech delivered earlier this year on Capitol Hill, and reprinted in the May issue of the Education Reporter, newspaper columnist Robert Holland of the Richmond, Virginia Times-Dispatch explained what's wrong with the School-to-Work system. School-to-Work is "not about expanding individual career choices or educating students broadly so they can change jobs many times in a lifetime," Holland observed. "School-to-Work, which is linked with Goals 2000, injects the federal government deeply and dangerously into shaping the curriculum of American schools. It puts the United States in the camp of regimes that decree what knowledge is 'official,' and . . . how that knowledge should be taught and for what purpose."
Holland warned that School-to-Work "locks students into career tracks much too early, chilling opportunity and killing youthful dreams. School-to-Work drastically narrows the curriculum," he continued, "making it less likely that schools will produce literate, well-rounded generalists who can cope with rapid change in civic life as well as the workforce. School-to-Work is about the servile arts, not the liberal arts."
Holland charged that School-to-Work "infringes on the sovereignty of the individual and the family. School-to-Work, as part of a national human resource development system, cuts local school boards and state legislatures almost completely out of the decision-making loop," he added. "School-to-Work is part of a managed economy and data-collecting network that poses grave dangers to Americans' liberty and privacy."
The only "positive" thing about School-to-Work is that, like all coercive utopian fantasies, it is bound to fail. "School-to-Work simply does not work," Holland explained. "Throughout their history, Americans have rejected efforts to have the government track their children into jobs satisfying the designs of economic planners. This has been, and remains, the land of boundless opportunity," he continued, "and everyday folks who are not drunk on the heady brew of government-subsidized think tanks like it that way. Furthermore, history is littered with regimes . . . that sought to create the New Economic Man and shape him to the specifications of the all-powerful state."
As has become increasingly common, the Pied Pipers of Leviathan present their latest freedom-restricting proposal as a boon to children. Holland predicted, however, that "School-to-Work's infringement on the sovereignty of the family will become increasingly apparent as more and more children receive career counseling in elementary and middle schools. As School-to-Work attempts to steer children into slots deemed in the interest of regional labor market and economic development needs," he observed, "it will become obvious how children are being cheated and deprived of a chance to realize their dreams and achieve their highest potential."
