My sixth-graders this year showed me something about how the “staus quo” is maintained.

A counseling intern working in the building did a weekly series of lessons on goal setting with my students. The kids occasionally responded to little surveys she gave them on various topics, and they discussed their answer choices. Coincidentally, toward the end of the year, the university hosted an I’m Going to College field trip for hundreds of upper elementary-level kids from around the district. The intern wanted to prepare the kids for this field trip, and she directed them to an online service that asked them questions about their interests, which presumably would suggest the sorts of career choices they might enjoy.

I figured it was a sign of critical thinking when several students reacted, “This is wrong!” as they read the results of the survey. “I don’t want to be a news reporter,” or “What’s this mean? It says I should go into Transportation.”

There was a lot of clicking on links to see exactly what kinds of work fell into these categories.

The I’m Going to College Day was entertaining. We arrived with a dozen other buses from district schools. Each class was herded around campus by 2 very nice guides who took us to see the library, some lecture halls, the registrar’s office, an empty dorm room, and the cafeteria where they all got an as-much-as-you-can-eat free lunch. That was a hit, even though it was hectic. Miss Alaska was there, too, autographing stuff the kids handed her. She was a big hit!

We attended some classes, too. The kids listened to professors from the engineering department tell about what engineers do, and they saw some cool demonstrations. We learned, among other things, that you can stand on a paper cup without crushing it if you fill it with sand. They also dissected cows’ hearts in a biology lab. A few were grossed out, but they were all pretty cool with it, and they did a good job. By the end of the day, most of them were convinced that college was a good place to go.

As a follow-up to the careers lesson, the counselor had the kids take another survey. This time they answered questions about the kinds of places they might like to live, and the various lifestyle choices they might make. Based on this, an income level necessary to support these choices was indicated. Going back to their career choices from the previous week, they checked which of them would provide them with the money they’d need to satisfy their lifestyle requirements.

Lots of talk broke out when they saw, for example, that the “transportation” worker didn’t earn the $89,000 dollar salary their middle class urban-dwelling plans required. So, what did they do? They revised their career choices, of course. They started looking for jobs that would help them meet their projected needs.

This was funny, since there were a lot of improbable matches. To hell with the interest survey! you could almost hear them thinking. One kid who truly hated to read or write decided he was going to be a federal judge. Perfect! This was easy. Who’d want to work at WalMart or Home Depot when you could be up there on the bench with the robes and the wooden mallet making important decisions?

When the lesson was over, and the intern turned the class back over to me, I decided to bring things back a notch closer to reality. As long as they were all thinking about careers and money, I figured, and as long as that seemed to be the main thing to consider when mapping your future, it seemed like a good time to do some quick math.

I asked if anyone knew what the minimum wage was. It’s around 6 bucks an hour, right? Well, imagine you got a good job earning maybe 10 bucks an hour (round numbers). Full time work is 40 hours a week. (This was news to some.) How much would that be? OK, take your 400 bucks and multiply that times 50, because you’ll need a couple weeks of vacation. The math whizzes call out, That’s 20,000 dollars a year. And then I say, Don’t forget to pay your taxes, so you need to cut that back by about 15 percent. Huh? Yeah, so that means you can count on paying what? Again, the math whizzes have their hands up and they call out, That’s $3,000 in taxes! OK, I say, How much do you take home? They figure that the “good” job, above minimum wage, would net them $17,000 a year, and this is a long way from their judge and heart surgeon pay.

I tell them that a lot of people have to work more than one job these days to get by. “My parents do that,” one kid says. “Mine, too,” says another. “Same here,” someone else says.

And this is another way that expectations are set. Schools are a piece of it, certainly. But what happens when everyone goes home? Corporate accountability is way out of style.

The status quo is the thing nobody wants to own. It’s the leaky faucet that someone else needs to fix.

In an achievement-oriented climate,

The emphasis is less on community and equity, and rather more on individual advancement and the need to satisfy investors and influential consumers. Education has come to resemble a private, rather than public, good.

And “equity” is a word for rationalizing the idea that if you want something, by God, you better damn well do what it takes to get it.

I was happy, weeks later, to overhear this kid tell one of his friends, “I’m gonna be a judge.” I do hope he goes for it. Who knows? Stranger things have happened.

The future has almost nothing to do with reality anymore.