Utah’s Sen. Chris Buttars caused a furor when he suggested, as a cost-cutting measure, giving high school students the option to go to college or the workplace at the end of their junior years. He’s right — senior year is a waste. But the solution isn’t college — it’s a “gap year.”
I taught seniors for 23 years in a row, and I loved them precisely because they were well aware they were in limbo between childhood and adulthood, and it scared them to death.
They wanted to drink, sleep, text message, hang out with friends, stare at the walls of their rooms, and sleep some more, all before they wanted to do the work that would prepare them for college and the workplace. They were good-humored about their reality avoidance. Some would say, “It’s not you, Dr. Jacobs. You should have had me last year when I cared about school!”
Many seniors skip school and feel imprisoned by the four walls they’ve looked at for several years. They invent new challenges — senior pranks, the best of which might reconstruct a VW Bug in an interior courtyard, or let chickens loose in the hallway — and generally walk a fine line between insubordination and creativity.
Seniors are an odd mix of insecurities and thoughtfulness. They think they’re stupid, unlovable, immortal, and invincible. They are sure the world is out to get them, and that it’s just possible they deserve that fate. They need to find meaning greater than the quiz sixth period or which lunch table to avoid so as not to appear a loser.
What they need in order to find meaning is an internship, a job, or a project where they are needed and valued. Only then will they be ready for college or the workplace.
A “gap year” serves the function of giving students a purpose that goes beyond SAT scores and GPA. They can volunteer to help build houses for Habitat for Humanity, or intern for a local organization that needs their skills but isn’t able to pay someone a full salary. They might study abroad to learn a second or third language, or intern abroad to learn that office work is similar the world over. Many colleges make this easier by deferring acceptances for a year.
The philosophy behind a gap year is that students have all the mental equipment they need for higher learning, but simply need a sense of mission. Commitment and passion will set them apart from others in school and in their careers, and that is much more likely to develop when they’re helping others than it is when they’re sleeping through classes and going to parties on Thursday nights.
This idea is not one-size-fits-all, and no doubt many high school seniors would be better served by skipping that year and going straight on to college. But the ones I remember were not ready to embrace an academic curriculum quite yet. What students need is not college a year earlier, but college a year later — after a period when life shows them what’s really important, and makes them realize that they can be important, too.
Erica Jacobs, whose column appears Wednesday, teaches at George Mason University. E-mail her at [email protected].
