McHigh? http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080128/ap_on_re_eu/britain_mcdonald_s_high LONDON - New on the McDonald's menu: a takeaway diploma.The government is giving the U.S. burger chain — along with a rail company and an airline — the right to award credits toward a high school diploma to employees who complete on-the-job training programs.
Great stuff, and those credits will have more meaning to those graduates than most of the classes they would sleepwalk through in regular high school. We spend so many resources educating the uneducable in this country, as if keeping them in high school somehow keeps them from becoming bad people. (Didn't used to be the case!) Any opportunity to provide these kids (and others) real skills that also lead to a diploma is fine with me. NB: McDonald's offers its corporate training program through its "Hamburger University." The courses have been evaluated for college credit recommendations by ACE.
Everyone likes to make fun of McDonald's employees, but they're actually a very good company to work for. Two childhood friends of mine started out by slinging burgers and working the counter, one is now a regional manager and the other has a corporate job at HQ. If you're willing to work hard and improve yourself, it's not a bad career path.
>> That's not a far stretch from what we already do here high schools across the USA. It's called "CO-OP" which grants credit for on the job working that is tied to a classroom work skills class. All of this is under light "supervision" of a classroom teacher. I worked in a fast food restaurant one year and a hospital the next...my teacher never set foot at my job- but if I were to get fired or quit, it would lower my grade. In our school, the year long course was worth 2 credits (double!!!) rather than the normal 1 credit. I completed "Home Economics and Related Occupations (HERO) twice, but our school also offered similar tracks in business, childcare, and the auto shop. There are pros and cons....saving for another day.
