Admiral Beez
Superstar
We're all pushing the youth to be the same. Youth are all being pushed towards university, to become drones.
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What's with all the anxiety in today's youth?
- Thread starter Admiral Beez
- Start date
M.R.Victor
Active Member
Can I ask what you mean by drones? Is this an explicit push? My view is that we celebrate superstars, and to everyone else we give palliative compliments. It's a real mind-fuck but we do it for esoteric goals.
James
Senior Member
I get the impression that individualism has actually taken the forefront. I hear and see youths generally say they don't want to be a slave to their job. Many say they'd rather just do what they love and strive to do it well.
I see their role models to be people more like Mark Zuckerberg and less like Larry Ellison. Even YouTube stars often times are held up to a similar level. In this new era, anyone can be a star; you just need to be in the right place at the right time.
I see their role models to be people more like Mark Zuckerberg and less like Larry Ellison. Even YouTube stars often times are held up to a similar level. In this new era, anyone can be a star; you just need to be in the right place at the right time.
Johnny Au
Senior Member
It would require much investment for one to become the next Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos, or Jimbo Wales.
prosperegal
Senior Member
Kids I went to high school with were ALL pushed to go to university. This was in the 90s. I don't think I know ANYONE who wasn't. And students who attend my alma mater STILL ARE. However, I'm sure their anxiety issues are far greater than when I was in school.
wild goose chase
Active Member
I know that of course nowadays, there's the perception that "everyone needs a degree", but I wonder when most people would say that the push that everyone should go started.
Definitely by the late 90s and 2000's, a Bachelor's degree was no longer really that "special" and by the 2000s or so you definitely heard about the whole "overqualified" thing with the stereotypical barista at Starbucks with an philosophy degree or whatever. In the 60s and 70s at least based on what I generally hear from most people, including family members, it still made you stand out among the crowd to employers to have gone to university.
prosperegal
Senior Member
Back in the old days (probably pre-60s?), kids who wanted to go to university often went to different high schools than those who didn't. Wasn't that why "old" Toronto schools tend to be ABC Collegiate Institute (prepares kids for university) or XYZ Technical? Someone once told me Northern Secondary was at one point called Northern Technical. In fact, Northern is the only "secondary" in the old city. In other words, kids who went to collegiates probably had pressure to matriculate into university and not getting in could be seen as shameful. I know that in the "old line" private school world, university was pretty much "given" - especially for boys.
King of Kensington
Senior Member
There was also Central Tech, Central Commerce etc.
prosperegal
Senior Member
Exactly. The "secondary" designation wasn't used in the old city. That was reserved for schools in, say, North York or Scarborough. I don't know what it's "like" for the "typical" Torontonian in the old days. My parents are immigrants from Hong Kong and I went to a high school where university was an "expected" course for decades. Our prospectus notes how the students were offered courses typically found in boys' schools (Latin, algebra, etc...) even before Trinity College admitted women. I don't know what the exact matriculation rate was prior to, say, the 30s, but I assume it was very high (much higher than the average in Toronto, especially for girls) by the 40s or 50s.
King of Kensington
Senior Member
Canada I believe has the highest proportion with post-secondary qualifications of any country, though not university graduates. Canada has something like twice as many people with the college diplomas as the US has with Associate's degrees.
But I think we're moving towards convergence with the US as you can now get Bachelor's degrees in things like hotel management at colleges here.
But I think we're moving towards convergence with the US as you can now get Bachelor's degrees in things like hotel management at colleges here.
prosperegal
Senior Member
At "full" universities, too. Guelph, for example. They have two programs: co-op and regular. If you're going to take something like hotel management, opt for co-op. Like many jobs, there's probably "school snobbery" or "school preference." I took a post-grad PR program at a college that isn't Humber. I have a feeling that some companies had a PREFERENCE for Humber grads.
wild goose chase
Active Member
I'm not sure if it's entirely true but think Canada usually somewhat follows (lags?) educational trends south of the border (eg. I think standardized testing like EQAO in Ontario started much later than when Americans starting doing it, and even now, Canadians take less standardized tests in elementary/middle/high school, and don't have things like the SAT if they want to go on to university).
I also notice Americans seem to prepare their kids much earlier for post-secondary. University/college prep is a bigger deal in the US probably because of many competitive requirements (especially with things like AP, the SAT, extracurriculars), but on the flip side there is more of a "college culture" (school pride, college sports, fraternities and sororities, even things like much more pride by alumni in their alma mater after graduating, where adults will bring it up as a conversation topic long after their college years are over) down there. I experienced post-secondary education in both countries and I still remembering noticing such "cultural differences" I suppose, firsthand. I think a larger proportion of Canadians still see university/college more pragmatically, in a more "pathway to a job" kind of way, while it has elements (liberal arts focus, focus on the "college experience") stateside that are less prominent here.
King of Kensington
Senior Member
...which is ironic given that Canadian education used to be more "humanistic" and hierarchical, and traditionalists used to look down on Americans for believing in "mass education" (college and university attendance prior to the mass 1960s university expansion was much higher in the US than anywhere else).
Going away to school is much more common in the US than here (though there are a few that fairly national student bodies such as McGill and Dalhousie), and the "college town" doesn't exist in the same way here. Places like Kingston and Guelph are cities with a university presence, but we have no equivalents to Iowa City, Urbana or Amherst, Mass.
Going away to school is much more common in the US than here (though there are a few that fairly national student bodies such as McGill and Dalhousie), and the "college town" doesn't exist in the same way here. Places like Kingston and Guelph are cities with a university presence, but we have no equivalents to Iowa City, Urbana or Amherst, Mass.
wild goose chase
Active Member
The US seems to have had a longer history of mass education than almost any other country, with the Puritans of New England having one of the first societies with mass literacy.
wild goose chase
Active Member
I guess we never had an analogue of the "land-grant university".