So while my students were constructing their colonial houses primarily out of popsicle sticks, I learned something:
Jorge's one heck of an engineer. The kid had built his walls with support beam sticks and everything (with no instruction to do so). It was actually a sturdy structure. Best in the class. I probably couldn't have built one better myself.
And that's the tradegy of it all -- that Jorge has talents, but if he never learns to read or write well, his opportunities in life will ultimately be limited. I can see him being pegged as just the type of kid to be shunted into vocational ed., but I've got a problem with that. Jorge, all of 10, or all of 15, shouldn't have his opportunities carved away because the system has, in whatever fashion, failed to get him to where he needs to be, or at least to give him the chance to get there himself. Sure, he (and i'm generalizing the case out now) could probably make a fine auto mechanic or contractor, but what about the opportunity to become an architect? A design engineer? Those are things that take advanced training -- in most cases, college.
I'm not saying, and I've never said, that every kid needs to go to college. Only that every kid needs to have the opportunity to go to college. And I look at Jorge, poor writer, poor reader, bright child, budding engineer, and I think: Here is hope and despair, all within the body of a child four and a half feet tall.
