Communications theorists say that in any face-to-face communication, only 7% of the message is conveyed by words. The other 93% is conveyed nonverbally, through media like gestures, facial expression, and intonation.

If this percentage seems exaggerated, consider a situation where you ask someone, “How are you?” and the person answers, “Fine.” Imagine how many different ways that word “Fine” could be spoken. The speaker could sound genuinely happy, or resigned, or sarcastic, or tired, or angry. Imagine the possible expressions on the speaker’s face.

Suppose you ask, “How are you?” and the person who answers “Fine” immediately starts to cry. Do you trust the word you heard?

In fact, if what we hear a person say doesn’t agree with that person’s nonverbal behavior, we believe the nonverbal behavior.

We are so used to communicating using electronic media that we forget how much information we miss when we aren’t in the physical presence of the person we are talking to. Email and text messaging are full of messages that were meant to be harmless but that offended the recipient. The words arrived without the padding of gesture and tone of voice.

This is why for all the praise accorded online learning, it is a poor substitute for sitting in a classroom with other students and an instructor, experiencing the dynamics of human interaction and getting face-to-face feedback. I’m having a lot of fun right now using Rosetta Stone to study Spanish on my computer, but when I used my newly-learned words to ask my friend Esther, “¿Cómo está su hija?” I still couldn’t understand her reply.  The software can’t provide a real person saying something unpredictable.

When traditional instructors oppose online learning—and many do—it isn’t just because they are worried about their jobs. It is because they understand the limitations of the medium better than do the entrepreneurs selling online courses.

I take it all back. Everyone needs to go straight from high school to college and major in science.

Well, no. Actually, we need to be providing good science education in elementary school and high school so that everybody understands what is happening with the physical environment in which we live. When economic times get bad, as they are right now, people cut back on toys, goodies, and recreational eating. But we all still need to be able to drink the water and breathe the air.

The Sacramento Bee just reported that joblessness is at a 12-year high. (That means that things were this bad around 1996, but it’s hard to remember that far back.) Especially hard hit is the leisure and hospitality industry. Several companies that sold goods for the home, such as Levitz Furniture and Linens ‘n Things, have sought bankruptcy protection, and so have several chain restaurants. Among other workers, this affects retail and food service employees and the people who manage them.

But the Bee says that there is still a demand for workers in computer programming, green energy, and nursing. We knew computer-related jobs and nursing were still solid fields. More surprising is that the number of green-collar jobs—those that relate to the environment, ecology, and alternative energy—is growing. Not all of these jobs involve science directly, but many do. SustainableBusiness.com has lots of information about this, including a long list of related jobs.

Something very promising is happening with business. It is discovering (with a lot of encouragement from laws and regulations) that there is money to be made in using the planet and its resources wisely instead of just using them up.

“Greenwashing” is a problem, though. Greenwashing involves using expressions of concern for the environment to cover efforts to sell products and services. I have no doubt that right this minute, there are private vocational colleges looking for ways to exploit the growing interest in environmental sustainability. They will introduce dumbed-down versions of “green” coursework to sell to ill-prepared student customers, luring them with promises of “green” jobs.

Here, as with other fields of study, my advice to those interested in a future related to environmental sustainability is to head for the local community college.

Colleges overstate the importance of education (although not the importance of a degree) in getting a job. It might be nice to think that sitting in classrooms for 16 years getting A’s would ensure a person’s lifetime career success, but it isn’t true, as plenty of high GPA students (including me) have discovered to their dismay.

I used to teach a college course in job-search techniques and résumé writing. We did an exercise in which I described two candidates for a job and asked students to discuss which candidate should get the position. One candidate had excellent qualifications but hadn’t bothered to research the company. The other had good qualifications and knew one of the supervisors.

Students with no workplace experience argued that it was unfair for anyone to get a job just because of whom they knew. By contrast, students who had experience in the workplace knew that the second candidate would probably get the job, and they were able to argue that that wasn’t a bad thing. Many skills can be learned on the job, but a candidate without good “people” skills can have a negative effect on workplace morale and productivity. Knowing in advance that a candidate will be a good “fit” can save an organization time and money.

I would modify that old adage, “It isn’t what you know but whom you know.” After observing my daughter for the past few months, I’d say that finding a job depends on what you know, whom you know, and what kind of person you are.

She graduated from college this past May with excellent grades but with a self-designed major that didn’t look very competitive in her field, which is urban planning. Her professors were pushing her to go straight on to grad school. Her father and I were urging her to work for a while first.

She knew people in the local planning department and had done an unpaid internship there several summers ago. For six weeks after graduating, she worked there on a special project for 40 hours a week, unpaid. That segued into a paid internship; then a planning position opened up. They’d had plenty of opportunities to observe her positive personality, her energy, and her work ethic. No one who knows her is surprised that she got the job.

The previous contributor to this blog, Susan, pointed me in the direction of Sir Ken Robinson’s incredibly thought provoking and entertaining speech posted on TED. These days whenever elementary education is mentioned in media, almost invariably the subject of the piece is test scores, failing schools, NCLB, etc. Sir Ken provides a refreshing look at the state of education all over the world and questions how we are preparing the next generation for what is to come, and he doesn’t think the answer lies in better test scores or more 8th graders passing algebra.

The new school year approaches for my three children, and Sir Ken’s words echo in my head as I worry about what a new grade will bring for each child. I am by no means an expert on education, but I consider myself and expert on my own children and how public education is serving (or not serving) them. Our oldest daughter enters High school this year. She walked into kindergarten without a day of preschool under her belt 9 years ago and has excelled ever since with what seems to be very little effort. She definitely is one of the lucky ones who responds to the traditional structure that our public schools provide; I feel that college is definitely in her future.

My youngest child, a son, enters kindergarten this year. He has attended preschool for the past 2 years and blossomed wonderfully. He can already read common sight words, sound out others, is beginning to write phonetically, and seems to have a genuine desire to learn. I have high hopes for him.

That leaves my middle child, who will enter the 5th grade this year. She is on the very mild end of the autism spectrum, and has struggled since the beginning to maintain grade level work. All of her teachers praise her strong work ethic, but she frequently tells me that she hates school. She has an incredible imagination, though, loves music and adores drawing. The elementary school just doesn’t have the time to foster such talents, though, at least with any degree of depth, being so busy with the core subjects that Sir Ken spoke of.

I’ve been to countless honor roll awards assemblies for my eldest, but I fear I may never see my younger daughter get on the honor roll. Academic success should be celebrated and rewarded, most definitely, but at times I feel badly for my daughter and kids like her, watching their classmates be celebrated for making the honor roll year after year while the rest of the kids go back to the classroom empty-handed. These children have unique talents and gifts as well, and who knows what hidden talents we might uncover among the higher achieving population as well if the system shifted some of its focus away from the core subjects and onto the “softer” ones. Until a change like this comes it will be up to parents like me to nurture these talents on my own time and my own dollar.

I must ask myself, too, what the future holds for my daughter and her counterparts? As the end of high school looms and other students are studying for SATs and touring colleges, will there be other paths open to lifelong success and self sufficiency for her? High schools take great pride in quoting how many students they send off to college and we are left to assume that those that did not advance are a failure of the system. Will her counselors recognize that while she may not be standard college material, she is still worthy of their time, expertise and guidance?

Susan (see previous post) was impressed by the insights of Sir Ken Robinson, available on TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design: Ideas Worth Spreading). She echoes Robinson when she observes, “Higher education PUNISHES creative thinkers, it does not reward them. It PUNISHES free thinkers, it does not reward them. ALL schooling is about creating new replacements for the business world, even if you go into science.”

“College is not for everyone and you know what? That’s OK! All the education they say you need for the sports car and big house and designer clothes is going to require immense gains in financial debt into five figures you will spend a great deal of time after college working off. That’s the trick of the entire formula.

“What this country is really hurting for, is to stop the white collar propaganda and to tell kids that SKILLED TRADESPEOPLE are in short supply and getting shorter. You can make a great living in many cool fields as a blue collar worker with FAR LESS college time needed which equals FAR LESS debt hanging around your neck when you get out.

“If you want to be an astrophysicist or doctor, by all means go to college but do it because it’s what you cannot see yourself failing to have done. But know that your self-worth does not lie in a four, six, or eight year degree. You do NOT have to lie prostrate to the higher mind because ‘everyone else does it.’ Elevator repair people make very, very good money but most kids don’t even know about these jobs, or being a welder or crane operator. They just blindly march into business or medical degrees.

“And parents, your children are not here to fulfill the frustrated dreams you never completed. It’s OK if your kid doesn’t want to be a doctor and doesn’t want to be a pro athlete and doesn’t want to be an engineer. Watch what your children are REALLY good at, and get them to the right mentors. Drama, art, dance, music, skilled tradespeople; these are all valuable and viable options.

“If you think your kid’s a gifted genius, have their IQ tested by an objective pro and ACCEPT the results. If she’s a brainiac, she doesn’t belong with the majority of kids in average schools. But if she IS ‘average,’ accept her for it instead of treating it like a death in the family. Maybe she’d be better at Julliard than Harvard. Maybe she’d be happy as a crane operator. The point is, the belief that the only valuable people have valuable white collar jobs is a myth and disastrous to our economy and future as a country capable of sustaining itself.

“If I had it to do over, I would never have gone into computer programming and I certainly would never have burnt up my college money in a school that saw me as just another number to fill ‘x’ slots to get more federal funding for next year’s budget.”

My request for people to share their stories brought a response from Susan, whose experience illustrates many of the weaknesses of our present system for preparing people to earn a living.

Bored by high school, Susan dropped out and got her GED. Her parents persuaded her to get a cosmetology license, but she found it difficult to get hired in a “good” salon or to make enough money. So she joined the military and came out after four years ready to use her GI bill benefits. She chose community college for its lower student/teacher ratio and because her GI Bill would go farther as she met lower division breadth requirements. She had no concrete idea what she wanted to do.

Susan says, “I found the matriculation process did me no service at all. No one spent any time talking with me as an individual to help assess my strengths and what field I might find most satisfaction in. Instead, I would be told ‘hot’ fields which usually meant ‘more money.’ The biggest mistake you can EVER make is to choose a profession simply based on the possible financial rewards and also to believe anything anyone on a college administration staff says to you. They are sales people, and you will figure this out too late if you don’t figure it out now.”

Susan went into computer programming because it was a “hot” path. Before she could finish her A.A. degree, personal problems forced her to leave school and get a job. She found work as a software engineer, but the company was poorly managed and didn’t have the sales to actually support her position. When she returned to school, she decided to get an A.S. instead of an A.A. No one advised her that switching degree programs would force her to take seven additional classes instead of only one. Susan says, “I was very angry that after all the money invested, now they wanted MORE on some . . . trumped up curriculum full of ridiculous Microsoft classes.”

“But, higher education is everything right? Wrong. I bought in once again to a prestigious university’s certification course for project management. It promised a lot (for a lot of money) and delivered nothing. Again, I completed it all and in advance of the other students but to date it has been nothing more than wasted money. It hasn’t impressed one employer. Why?

“I don’t have a bachelor’s degree in X. ‘X’ being any old degree. Degrees are now so devalued that they just want you to have one.”

Susan has more to say; see the next post.

Advice to high school graduates considering a “gap year” or some other alternative to college: Show your maturity by acknowledging that both the tax system and employer-sponsored health insurance are designed to encourage your continued dependence on your parents.

At tax time, a parent can claim a son or daughter as a dependent if that son or daughter is under 24 and a full-time student. (IRS Publication 501 defines a “student” as a child who attends school full-time during some part of each of any five calendar months of the year. This publication also defines “school.”) Since most high school seniors are not ready to head right out into the world and support themselves—despite what they may think or wish—in practice, Mom and/or Dad will be supporting them, at least for awhile. They will, in fact, continue to be dependents, at least to some extent.

The tax system is designed to reward families in which kids go straight to college. So if you don’t want to do that, you need to be ready to make a credible case for being able to support yourself, or at least make a substantial contribution to your own support. Do a budget! (Budget forms are readily available online.) You will be making this case to people who probably have a much more realistic idea than you do about what it costs to live independently.

One cost of living independently—and the second practical reason why parents push kids straight to college—is health insurance. Employer health plans usually include coverage for dependent children, and children are considered dependents only as long as they are in school full-time. Our daughters, who graduated in May of this year, dropped off our health insurance at the end of May. That meant finding alternative health coverage, which can be quite expensive.

A friend of my daughters’ who has spent the last four years in and out of community college, wondering what to do with herself, told me that her parents urged her to keep going to school so that they could continue to provide her with health insurance under their employment coverage. I completely understand their reasoning.

(Of course, if we had universal health care in the U.S., this factor would not enter into decisions about whether to go to college.)

Traditionally, higher education translates into more years of dependency for young people. Taxes and health insurance are just two areas in which this extended dependency is encouraged by government and social institutions.

From Tanya, posted at “Share your story”:

“When I graduated from high school I had high hopes of going to the college of my choice, an Art school that is widely renowned. Unfortunately I couldn’t afford that particular school, at least not right away. So, instead of taking some time off and working for a while I decided to go to a less expensive college that was closer to home. This plan fell through when my family and I realized just how much that college would cost. I told my parents that I would rather go nowhere for now and just work to save money so that I could go to the college of my choice when the time came. They refused, telling me that a college education is one of the most important assets that I could have in this life.

“I want to be a tattoo artist. I don’t really need to go to college for that and if I do go I want it to be an art school so that I can hone the specific skills that I will need in my future. I don’t want to bother with taking courses that I am not interested in and don’t need. My parents didn’t listen to me and sent me to the local community college which has no art classes whatsoever. Of course I failed almost every class because I disliked it so much that I never went. I was bored and failed to see how these unchallenging classes filled with other people who seemed to want to be somewhere else could possibly impact my life very much. Especially my artistic life.

“Well, it impacted me in a very real and very negative way. Now I have the money to go to the school I want but I am afraid that I won’t get accepted because of my poor grades at the community college I attended. If only my parents hadn’t pressured me so much to attend college immediately because they were afraid that if I took time off I would never get the education they had planned for me. Right now I would be a lot happier. All they could ever talk about was how a college education is what will make or break me in this world and without one I’ll be nothing. It’s a lot to live up to, especially when what I want to do I could very competently learn from another tattoo artist for a fraction of the cost of an art school.”

At a wedding I attended recently, a fellow guest said, “College is the new high school.” It appeared that she thought that situation was either good or inevitable. I, of course, think it is unfortunate, a trend worth resisting. We agreed not to discuss it.

Saying that college is the new high school suggests that we are doing such a good job of educating our young people that they can all advance beyond old notions of what a basic education involves. But in fact, too many kids drop out of high school, and many of those who graduate don’t have the basic skills to tackle either college or a job without some kind of remediation.

Saying that college is the new high school means that colleges have to provide the basic skills and job readiness that high schools used to provide. Employers know this, so increasing numbers of them require college degrees of employees they hire, whether or not the degree signifies any particular set of specialized skills or knowledge.

I worry about the young people who are still hearing that all they need is a college degree, in any subject area, to qualify for a prestigious white collar job and to earn an income they couldn’t earn with just a high school diploma. I want us to start telling them that some degrees will just keep them from being screened out at the beginning of the hiring process. If they aspire to more than that, they will need to be selective about their major and smart about matters like volunteer work, internships and networking.

I also worry about the young people with inadequate English-language competence (of whom there are many in California) whose families don’t have any personal experience of higher education. These young people and their families are eager for improved social status and a higher standard of living. This makes them vulnerable to anyone who can persuade them that educational debt is worth the benefits of having that magical piece of paper, a college degree.

A recent editorial in The Stockton Record links the high fertility rate among immigrant Latinas to the lag in educational attainment of Latinos in general. The editorial suggests that risky behaviors—not just teen pregnancy but also adolescent drug use and attempted suicide—would diminish if more Latinos had a chance to go to college.

There is plenty of evidence that birth rates drop as education levels rise. There is also plenty of evidence that Latinos and other minority students have limited access to a college education. Some of that is due to stereotyping. A fellow student in one of my grad school classes told of a high school counselor who steered her away from college prep classes, convinced that because she was a Latina, she should become a hairdresser.

More recently, my adolescent Latina neighbor switched from regular high school to an ROP alternative program because administrators at the regular high school were convinced that she was a gang member. I’m in a pretty good position to know that that is nonsense because I live right across the street from her and the grandmother who is rearing her with a firm and wise hand. She succeeded with honors once she got into a program small enough to treat her as an individual.

However, it isn’t just stereotyping that closes off the college option for immigrant Latinos. Many simply do not have the English language fluency to go to college. That is partly because under No Child Left Behind, schools (like Will Rogers Middle School in the Sacramento area) may actually be penalized for focusing on teaching English to immigrants. Even if the students improve, the school may have low standardized test scores that mark it as “Failing” under federal guidelines.

As I mentioned in an earlier posting, one of my local high schools raises its Academic Performance Index (California’s measure of school success) by putting all students, including special education students and those with weak English-language skills, in college prep classes. Even if the students fail, the school’s API looks good.

So on one hand, we are giving immigrant students the impression that they need to go to college in order to “be somebody.” But on the other hand, government mandates hamper educators in their efforts to give students the language skills and academic preparation they need to succeed in a serious college program. The Record frequently argues that San Joaquin County needs more colleges. But the Valley Futures Project reports that UC Merced, the newest university in the Central Valley, does not easily attract local Latinos because many are under-prepared by local school systems.

Of course, there is no shortage of costly vocational colleges that will take naive immigrant students, regardless of their English-language competence and academic preparation, and offer them hope for a well-paying job.

In a recent edition of my local newspaper, the Street Scene photographer asked people what advice they have for graduating seniors. Some answers:

“Go to college to broaden your horizons.” (It depends on whether you are willing to take advantage of college’s broadening opportunities.)

“Go to college to make more money.” (It depends on your major, among other things.)

“Stay in school and go to college to prepare for the big world.” (Which aspects of the big world does college prepare one for? I wonder.)

And this one, from an earlier Street Scene query:

“I didn’t go to college, but I want my kids to go because in 20 years there won’t be any more blue collar jobs.” Actually, blue collar jobs are the one category of jobs that we can count on having in 20 years. Never mind the facts, though. When you want something for your kids, you can always find a way to justify it.

Last week HDNet aired a program called “The Admissions Game” in which Dan Rather talked to college admissions people, students trying to get admitted to college, and college presidents. At the end, Rather said that in the U.S., college has become “an engine of social mobility.”

This is what the push to college is really about. My former students nailed it when they said they wanted to go to college to “be somebody.”

In the U.S., we are willing to recognize the existence of economic classes, but we don’t like to acknowledge the existence of social classes. Our national narrative requires us to hold firmly to the idea “all men are created equal.” The argument about college graduates earning more money allows people to substitute a socially acceptable motive (financial security) for a motive that assumes a condition—social inequality—that we are all trying to ignore.

The subject today is frivolity—specifically, which college students can afford to indulge in it, and in what circumstances it is appropriate.

First consider Amanda, the freshman roommate of one of my daughters. Amanda grew up in Chicago, where she attended an inner-city high school.  An International Baccalaureate program, plus after-school art classes and a museum job at the Art Institute of Chicago, kept her occupied through high school and away from a home environment that wasn’t always conducive to scholarship. Once in college, she spent her summers interning in Washington, D.C.

I got to know Amanda when she came home with my daughter two different years for spring break. Chicago was too far away and the airfares too high for her to fly home for the week. This young woman was not a partier. She was serious and focused, subdued by temperament and not a little impatient with some of her peers who were trying hard to have a fun college experience.

Amanda graduated last Friday with a degree in political science, and she is going straight into a master’s program that targets underserved minorities.

Next, consider Linda, a friend of my other daughter. Linda, a woman in late 30s, is a single mother of eight. It’s hard for me to even imagine the kind of commitment it would take to earn a degree under those circumstances. I met Linda briefly after the graduation ceremony. She was warm, friendly, exuberant; it was easy to see why my daughter likes and admires her.

During that graduation ceremony, beach balls mysteriously appeared during the Commencement address and began to be batted around among the graduates. (Apparently this is a common graduation activity.) My daughter told me that Linda caught one of those beach balls and deflated it. It isn’t surprising that Linda took the occasion more seriously than some of her fellow graduates did.

Amanda’s and Linda’s race and class place them among those whose access to a college education is limited. Yet it seems safe to suppose that students like these are not the ones who will be getting drunk every weekend instead of studying or who will be smuggling in beach balls to disrupt their Commencement.

How many spots in colleges and universities are being filled by kids who have the high school background, the socio-economic status, and the financial resources but not the serious motivation to attend? How many of those spots could be filled by students more ready to be there, if we could just identify them?