FACT 5:
Knowledge in an academic or vocational field will continue to be a requirement for most employment.
Other Things to Know:
- Academics are critical and build job-specific skills.* For example, Math builds the base for a career in Accounting. But it also provides the foundation for a career in carpentry, whch also requires a working knowledge of Geometry.
- Students who enter college or technical schools post-high school with deficient academic skills must take and pay for remedial courses, will take longer to graduate, and postpone the ability to earn a salary by several years.*
- Demanding academic courses prepare students for a career and rewire the brain so it can learn more and think more deeply.**
- As available jobs become more demanding, all working adults will need to be life-long learners of challenging subject matter.**
There is no escaping the need to learn demanding academic material. Colleges demand academic learning at specified levels. Most high-paying jobs, including highly paid technical/trades and careers, require education after high school. Failure to learn appropriate material in high school will result in the need to take remedial courses in college, which are as expensive as regular college courses but do not count toward graduation. Under-preparedness for education after high school will increase costs dramatically and postpone the individual’s entrance into the workforce and payment of student loan debt.
But perhaps more importantly, challenging courses build the brain like exercise builds the body. Like a physical muscle, the brain gets stronger the more it is used. In fact, it is a ‘pattern-seeking device.’ When the neurons in the brain are activated in a particular pattern, it’s faster and easier for the brain to follow that same pattern in the future. This means when a teen uses his/her brain to complete a task, the brain ‘remembers’ the task, so next time it becomes a little easier. The time after that, it’s even easier, and so on. The bottom line is that human brains aren’t static. Through repeated practice and continual challenges, students can build pathways that make their brains stronger and smarter.** RNMKR