An Early Focus On

Title: An Early Focus On Students' True Interests Word Count: 533 Author: Kenny Love Email: [email protected] Tel.: (936)545-0381 Categories: Education/Childcare/Family ________________________________________

"An Early Focus On Students' True Interests"

By Kenny Love

One of the most productive projects that our worldwide education system could embark on in satisfying both its individual citizens' and international educational interests simultaneously is to restructure our education systems to focus on students' desires as early as possible, starting at the junior high school level and certainly no later than the freshman high school year.

Having attended college, being the son of a 30-year career public schoolteacher, and having served as a substitute teacher myself for a number of years, I feel that I have firsthand experience to support my point.

While there are private lower education schools and institutions, i.e., Magnet schools, generally, these types of educational facilities are tuition based, thus, making their educational benefits unreachable to most students.

While many (if not most) schools are strongly and increasingly supportive, financially and otherwise, of sports programs, their educationally focused subject areas are often lackluster, at best. The reality is that not every student will grow up (or desires) to become an NFL or NBA sports star.

In fact, most high school players themselves will never enjoy this level of success either, with their pinnacle of success being reached at the college level.

In my own small-town school district, there has not existed a significant literary arts program at any level within the school district's curriculum for a number of years. As an example and, specifically, there are no student choirs within the school system at any level.

But, my interests within this article lie far deeper than the ever decreasing lack of literary arts programs in today's public schools. Because, I am of the opinion that in many cases and, perhaps most cases, students reveal their life interests fairly early in life. I believe most will agree that this is very obvious in sports.

However, I believe that it is also true with other vocations, except that there is significantly less attention paid to and support given to students who express interests in other areas. And, in these scenarios, students must truly "stick out like a sore thumb" to attract any degree of external attention.

But, what of students who, possibly, have a mediocre level of talent but could become world class productive sources, if only they could have assistance through grass roots support networks that include a proactive pre-college education?

I am, primarily, speaking of students who exhibit early interest in such areas as science, health, accounting, psychology, language, and more subjects that can serve to benefit the larger circle of humankind?

In this observer's opinion, again, there should be a standard age, whereby, in addition to tests of intellect, students' own personal interests of prospective and particular vocations should be assessed and determined by no less than their school counselors, with subsequent plans created to allow pre-college students to become familiar with their fields of interest.

This will greatly serve to make their subsequent college educational experiences much easier and enjoyable, as opposed to many students waiting until the latter part of their college sophomoric years to declare their majors.

Having such an early educational advantage in desired fields of interests will, ultimately, serve to produce a far greater number of competitive professionals both educationally and consistently. _________________________________________

Editor's Note: Kenny Love is an author writing in a number of genres. He also manages PodLife, an ongoing work-in-progress organization that distributes self-help and life improvement resources at www.podlife.org

------------------------------------