I have some graduate level work.... about half way to an MBA. But I was not a high school graduate until 2009.... some 27 years after I got my BA.... and some 37 years after I received my GED in the Army, so this perspective isn't based on any educational snobbery or elitism.
I get that the nature of a bureaucracy is to self-justify and self-perpetuate. But this? This is ridiculous.
Let's take this a step further: If you can't require a high school diploma... how can you require any diploma?
Are we now to become a "T-ball" society, where achievement is meaningless and ability secondary to avoiding the concept of offending anyone? Though some may argue that, with the ongoing application of affirmative action, we've long since achieved that status, I believe that most know the cancer of affirmative action, inculcating victimhood because of race or gender, has not accomplished anything positive but has, instead, served to reinforce the concept that nothing bad that happens to a woman or a person of color EVER happens because of their choices in life... including the choice by many to drop out of school.
With a typically 30% student drop out rate, teaching is a miserable business, made even more so by the fringe-left unions most teachers are forced to join.
But the fact is that given the ease of achieving a diploma in this day and age of victimhood and a de-emphasis of personal responsibility, the vast majority of those who bail out on school and don't get a diploma do so because they feel like it, and not because they're incapable of meeting those increasingly lower qualifications.
In short, if you have the lack of ability to achieve a high school diploma, then it's likely that you lack the ability to do a job that requires the imprimatur of a high school diploma.
That said, however, we all know that at base, the vast majority of those who do not have a diploma or it's equivalent don't have one not because they lacked capability, but because they lacked the desire.
They didn't feel like it.
So, along comes yet another of Obama's infected government agencies to tell us that the requirement of a diploma as a condition of employment may violate some one's civil rights.
I submit that those who lack a diploma, gratefully paid for by the hard-working taxpayers of this country, are violating their own rights and have no one to blame but themselves.
And for a federal agency to even SUGGEST that THIS application of self-responsibility isn't needed is a criminal concept that sends the wrong message in spades.
But it's typical.... isn't it?
EEOC: High school diploma requirement might violate Americans with Disabilities ActMore:
By Dave Boyer
The Washington Times
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Employers are facing more uncertainty in the wake of a letter from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission warning them that requiring a high school diploma from a job applicant might violate the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The development also has some wondering whether the agency’s advice will result in an educational backlash by creating less of an incentive for some high school students to graduate.
The “informal discussion letter” from the EEOC said an employer’s requirement of a high school diploma, long a standard criterion for screening potential employees, must be “job-related for the position in question and consistent with business necessity.” The letter was posted on the commission’s website on Dec. 2.
Employers could run afoul of the ADA if their requirement of a high school diploma “‘screens out’ an individual who is unable to graduate because of a learning disability that meets the ADA’s definition of ‘disability,’” the EEOC explained.
The commission’s advice, which does not carry the force of law, is raising alarms among employment-law professionals, who say it could carry far-reaching implications for businesses.
Maria Greco Danaher, a lawyer with the labor and employment law firm Ogletree Deakins, said the EEOC letter means that employers must determine whether job applicants whose learning disabilities kept them from obtaining diplomas can perform the essential job functions, with or without reasonable accommodation. She said the development is “worthy of notice” for employers.
“While an employer is not required to ‘prefer’ a learning-disabled applicant over other applicants with more extensive qualifications, it is clear that the EEOC is informing employers that disabled individuals cannot be excluded from consideration for employment based upon artificial barriers in the form of inflexible qualification standards,” she wrote in a blog post.
The idiocy of such a conclusion, along with the additional impact of government interference in the employment decision is obvious; this additional pandering to Obama's illiterate base, clear.
But the fact is that if I chose to require a Master's Degree for you to flip burgers at my drive in, that's nobody's business but mine.
And imagine: the military requires a high school diploma; are these clowns going to apply this utterly absurd conclusion to them, so we're met with another moronic "McNamara's 100,000" disaster?
There is no end to the idiocy emanating from the Empty Suit's White House.
7 comments:
A HS diploma means almost nothing, as evidenced by your own success in life. What if the military required one - where would you be? I could easily make a case that people in the military should have a HS diploma - and that's how closest discrimination works - something reasonable-sounding is used to cloak the real intent, which is to block a subset of the population that tends not to graduate from HS.
You still have a lot of good points in your argument; you just missed the irony of your own situation.
Where would I be?
Right where I am, because if it required a diploma to get in, then I would have done whatever it took to get one.
I don't for one second believe that ANY organization should bend itself to fit me. I believe that I am required to bend MYSELF to fit THEM.
Martin, we have to disagree.
I believe the subset of the population that "tends not to graduate from HS" is that subset that doesn't feel like it.
This nation spends billions to get that piece of paper into the hands of anyone who WANTS one.
And if you don't have the drive, the stick-to-itiveness, or the ability to achieve something so simple, what on earth makes you remotely believe that such a person has the ability to work for you... espcially when there's a lack of any other work history?
I met the requirement to enlist in the Army at the time, and had it been stricter, I would have met THOSE requirements as well... IF I wanted in bad enough.
But there is no way I ever would have been inculcated into a mind set of victimhood that would have made me think that the Army had to lower their standards to suit me.
The fact is that no employee or prospective employee MUST work for anyone.
If you're out loking for a job and you lack the free high school diploma that we will greatfully, as taxpayers, spend in excess of $100,000 of our dollars EACH student to provide you, there is a 99% chance that such a result is on YOU.
And where's the aspect of personal responsibility in any of this?
I, for example, would very much like to be an attorney. But I realize that such a goal isn't likely, given my lack of a law school degree.
How is it anyone's fault but my own that I don't have such a degree? And my lack of such a degree... how is my failure to get one a violation of my civil rights?
Damn, Martin... this isn't that far from claiming that someone's deliberate failure to vote violates their civil rights.
Having the privlege does not instil a right if you choose not to exercise it.
If, on the other hand, someone deliberately KEPT someone from getting a HS diploma... if getting the diploma was not a result of some choice or series of choicesmade by the drop out, then maybe... just maybe.... the lack of such a diploma might be an issue.
But as I stated: if I only want PhD's flipping burgers for me, then that's my business and the business of those who might be interested in a job working for me.
High School dropouts are not a suspect classification. And until they are, this isn't a rights matter... this is a "re-elect Obama" matter.
And given my stance that I would have risen to whatever the educational challenge may have been or may be to achieve my goal... where's the irony in that?
Kelly, I wasn't there when you were dropping out of high school. From your argument, I guess you just lazy, or bored, or didn't want it bad enough, so you flipped it off. It's a good thing the military didn't care whether you had a poor work ethic.
On the other hand, if you had extenuating circumstances, then, dude, don't be hypocritical.
How am I being hypocritical under any circumstance?
I indicated I would do whatever it took to meet the standard... whatever that standard might have been. Had the Army required (at the time) a HS diploma, I would have found a way to make that happen... just like anyone else can today... but are choosing not to.
YOUR choice is not MY violation of YOUR rights.
While my departure from high school was, in fact, beyond my control; even now, looking back, I fail to see where my rights were violated in any way.
You seem to be missing my point which I have not, apparently, expressed clearly enough: even though I was a product of the welfare state, I never felt that anyone owed me a thing. That I was unable to continue in high school was not a violation of my civil rights, my lack of a high school diploma was not something that in my wildest dreams I would ever have expected or demanded that any prospective employer overlook.
I recognize that the military can set whatever standard it likes, whenever it likes, as long as those standards are not race-based.
You asked where I would be if the Army had the same standards then that they have now; in short, what would I have done if the Army had today's standard of a high school diploma in place then that they have now: I answered that I would have done whatever it took to get such a diploma, because that's how bad I wanted in.
That's not an outcome special to me: ANYONE can do that now.
That anyone today does not have a high school diploma with the dozens of programs that make that happen today that weren't even a glint in anyone's eye back when I was in high school (Know of any so-called "alternative high schools" that existed back in 72?) is almost ALWAYS going to be a result of THEIR decision making process.
No.... no hypocrisy. I don't suggest for a minute that I received any special treatment of any kind.
The Army is constantly changing and evaluating standards for everything. But those standards are based on their needs at the time. They can afford to be more selective... and how do they do that, since only 25% or so of the population could enlist today if they wanted to?
Why, they require a high school diploma.
Odd, isn't it, that the Armed Forces can engage in a level of selectivity that is not now, apparently, going to be allowed for the private sector.
And will they aim this claim at the military?
Frankly, for me, it's much like women demanding equality... but remaining silent on the subject of a draft... or assignments in, say, the infantry.
Don't like the standards? Can't meet them? Then don't apply.
Simple, really. And if you want to see the EEOC's policy in action, then by all means, study up on McNamara's 100,000. I lived it, not because I was one (I qualified for OCS based on testing) but because I had to live with the consequences of that moronic policy.
And it sucked.
Kelly, if you can't see the irony, man, I can't help.
However, your story is uplifting - a testament to how the Welfare State can intervene when someone falls through the cracks.
I'm not quite sure if the rest of your points tie together on this issue, so let me just say that I too dislike the exploitation of good intentions, and the manipulation of grand ideas for sinister ulterior motives.
It seems more to me that this continuing "dumbing down of America" is an effort to cover up the failings of our public education system.
Dropping out is a choice, not a disability. High School Diplomas are easily gained today, even if you area functional illiterate.
The Teachers Unions oppose merit pay for teachers and oppose stricter standards for graduating.
So it seems logical to devise a way to prevent a High School Diploma requirement rather that straighten out the problems with our Public Indoctrination System.
School isn't for some people. Especially from female oriented, archiac teaching methods. "Education" includes a lot more than the lame options we're given.
All a HS diploma means is that you were forced into a mold long enough to put an "approved" stamp on your ass.
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