Ranting to /dev/null

Are you proposing a German-style tiered education in which students are put into segregated schools based on tests or other factors into white or blue collar tracks?

Sounds good to me.

When do the tests (or other sorting mechanism) take place, though?
It seems like in our system, everybody gets treated the same until they're 18, then the market decides what they're worth. Are you simply saying that this point should be lowered to... something like... say 12 in order to avoid unnecessary high school education?
Or are you saying there should be more choice all along - that is that at any point in a child's education, the child/parents/government/teacher should be able to move the child into a vocational track that teaches more blue collar skills?

Yeah, 12 sounds about right. Though I'd be open to retesting if a child and their parents feels they just bloomed late.

In terms of the actual sorting process, standardized tests sound good to me. And for people who argue that they're just "bad test-takers", I'd argue right back that performing those kinds of tasks - reproducing information under time-pressure and on demand - is one of the most significant things that these things determine.

On the whole, I don't really believe that all men are created equal, but that we are endowed by our creator with varying talents and abilities, and should not be penalized for having them. Likewise, a lack of talent should be recognized early and people who can't hack it should be gently moved to careers that fit their aptitudes. The problem we're facing today is millions of teenagers being prepped for college while millions of skilled blue-collar jobs go unfilled.

yeah, sounds cool. Where sign-up for dosage of soma?

Call it what you want. Not everyone gets to be an astronaut when they grow up, and it's a massive social and educational disservice to promise everyone that they can be. This is, I believe, what we're doing with the public school system.

I agree with the thought behind it. However, I think that a testing mechanism that relies on the judgement of the government will be flawed and corupt, and the judgement of the parents will be rose-colored.
How many parents will voluntarily send their children to auto mechanic classes rather than college prep, even if it's a good decision? Not many, because lots of parents also believe that "the good life" is deserved and that anyone can be a high paid lawyer if they just get into college, and that "dreams come true" and it'll hurt a child's self esteem to judge him. The feds track record with educational assessment is just awful, and I would expect that they would botch the whole thing up.
The only way it could be done is to get the private sector involved - have private employers come into a junior high class, run whatever tests they want, and assess the kids and tell them straight up if they can cut it in the industry (give them a grade. "You have a 75% chance of making it as an engineer." "You have a 30% chance of making it as a plumber" "You have no mechanical aptitude and should not run machinery" "You are not logical and will not ever be a lawyer"). Tell them what they can expect to make in the private market, and the chance they have of getting there. That'd make some of them want to be mechanics, and some of them want to be lawyers etc.
Just an idea.

i think most of us put behind the astronaut phase after we reached the third grade -then we wanted to be cops.

I went to public school. They offer Vo-tech options, right around the age of 14. The vo-tech kids are largely judged as flunkies and alot of times are. And unless something has changed since i graduated --and having younger siblings at the same school, i judge they haven't-- the program continues to languish to produce talented craftsman --though there are notable diamonds in the rough.

But there are kids who need the push to do better, who will perform. and i think the failure of them not getting that push is two edged. One is hippy-dippy methodolgies that act like rote-memorization and disipline in study are the educational equivalents to the Inquistion. The other party at fault is the parents: some kids have absentee parents, or have parents that do not emphasize academics over other domestic priorities. hell, some rural-minded/blue-collar parents are clueless as to what kind of advice to give to their kids about facing something like vocation/college when they begin to exhibit talents beyond their economical class.

what does one do coming from a family of farmers who know nothing but farming? truth be told, alot of blue-collar farmers do not want their kids to end up with the same options they 'enjoy' as adults. What does the farmer dad relate to his son --"don't go where corn don't grow?" the student, unfortunately, has to start from scratch.

i think the problem (at least in some cases) needs to be cut-off at the home, and, with the adminstration. alot of these kids can do it if they get the right discipline and GUIDANCE --which, admittedly, isn't happening consistently.

Was talking about this with my tutor here at Oxford. She thought the American system sounded interesting - she liked the supposed fairness of it. I, on the other hand, thought the British/Continental system makes more sense. Still, it's true that many people will only perform to the level they're considered capable of performing. If we expect people to do poorly at academics, they will.