Other Ways to Win or Citizenship Papers

Other Ways to Win: Creating Alternatives for High School Graduates

Author: Kenneth C Gray

High school students in the "academic middle" are at a great disadvantage when graduation time comes. In terms of traditional career paths, their futures aren't bright. Today's labor market is uncertain and difficult. Tuition costs for traditional four-year colleges have soared out of reach for many students. And the academic records of these students will greatly limit their likelihood of acceptance and, therefore, their options for further education. But there are promising alternatives. And that's the good-news message from authors Gray and Herr. This timely book explores the choices available to students beyond traditional four-year colleges, options that carry a much higher probability of success and are more accessible for students in the academic middle. The authors discuss the long-held "one way to win" theory and analyze why it is no longer working. Using information gained by studying the experiences of secondary and postsecondary students, Gray and Herr document the clear and immediate need to help students regain control of their futures. They explain the importance of learning relevant occupational skills and explore alternative avenues for training, such as one- and two-year postsecondary technical institutions and work-based programs sponsored by employers and employee groups. Other Ways to Win presents three major steps that schools or districts can take to modify school programs in order to create viable options for students. It shows specific strategies designed to involve teachers, parents, and students in the process of better preparing students for graduation and for the workplace. All students, regardless of their academic or financial backgrounds, deservethe opportunity to succeed. This resource can help make it happen. Every principal, every guidance counselor, and every school reference library should have at least one copy of this indispensable book.

Table of Contents:

	Preface
	Acknowledgments
	About the Authors
Pt. I	The One Way to Win Mentality
1	Rescuing a Generation Adrift	3
2	Recognizing the Forces Behind One Way to Win	20
3	Limited Options for Special Populations	37
Pt. II	Counting the Losers in the One Way to Win Game
4	Preparing High School Graduates: Questionable Academics and Second-Class Status	49
5	Winners and Losers in the One Way to Win Game	65
6	Who Cares? The Politics of Average Students	81
Pt. III	Creating Other Ways to Win
7	The High Skill/High Wage Rationale	95
8	Step 1: Providing Systematic Career Guidance for Students and Structured Feedback for Parents	111
9	Step 2: Redesigning College Prep for All Students	128
10	Step 3: Ensuring Equal Status and Focused Academics	147
11	Bringing "Average Students" to Excellence	166
	References	179
	Index	185

Book review: Purchasing and Supply Chain Management or 21st Century Supervisor

Citizenship Papers

Author: Wendell Berry

There are those in America today who seem to feel we must audition for our citizenship, with "Patriot" offered as the badge for those found narrowly worthy. Let this book stand as Wendell Berry's application, for he is one of those faithful, devoted critics envisioned by the Founding Fathers to be the life's blood and very future of the nation they imagined. Adams, Jefferson, and Madison would have found great clarity in his prose and great hope in his vision. And today's readers will be moved and encouraged by his anger and his refusal to surrender in the face of desperate odds. Books get written for all sorts of reasons, and this book was written out of necessity. Citizenship Papers, a collection of 19 essays, is a ringing call of alarm to a nation standing on the brink of global catastrophe.

Kirkus Reviews

Cagey uses of the essay as a town meeting to air threats to the commonweal. Our times are uneasy, Berry (Jayber Crow, 2000, etc.) states; critical elements of the American democratic tradition are being lifted wholesale from the foundation and carted away in broad daylight. A case in point is our new national-security policy, which "depends on the acquiescence of a public kept fearful and ignorant, subject to manipulation by the executive power, and on the compliance of an intimidated and office-dependent legislature." That ignorance will spell our doom, as will the "selfishness, wastefulness, and greed that we have legitimized here as economic virtues." Berry doesn't flinch when exhorting us to meet "the responsibility to be as intelligent, principled, and practical as we can be." His agrarian argument, which he has been making and remaking for decades, requires the recognition of our dependence on and responsibility to nature, and the concomitant responsibility for human culture. Likewise, Berry champions human-scale projects and an intimate knowledge of-not to mention reverence and gratitude for-our landscapes. "Consumers who understand their economy," he contends, "will not tolerate the destruction of the local soil or ecosystem or watershed as a cost of production." His refusal to abandon the local for the global, to sacrifice neighborliness, community integrity, and economic diversity for access to Wal-Mart, has never seemed more appealing, nor his questions of personal accountability more powerful. Where did the meat on our plates come from? Under what conditions were the clothes we're wearing made? Does biotechnology make sense considering the unforeseeable consequences? Mostblistering of all: "How many deaths of other people's children by bombing or starvation are we willing to accept in order that we may be free, affluent, and (supposedly) 'at peace'?" A clangor of worries, offering the antidotes of civility, responsibility, curiosity, skill, kindness, and an awareness of the homeplace.