While I don't agree with the post you are replying to, this is a pretty silly statement. I have friends whose parents are complete degenerates. One who beat his wife and kids and was regularly unemployed. He had absolutely nothing of value to teach my friend except for what not to do (which is not the same as taking advantage of his experience and knowledge).

My father in law was in a similar situation where he grew up in a very bad home with bad parents. He decided to let that experience shape his parenting by going the complete opposite direction and being a great father and excel in his career. If his father ever tried to give him advice on parenting or his career or basically anything, my father in law would probably just tell him to screw off (his father is dead now, but they didn't have a good relationship when he was alive).

Anyone can be a parent. Just being the parent of a 30 year old does not magically make your advice worth anything. My parents are wonderful and I eat up any advice they can give me when parenting my 5 month old or even pursuing my career, but not everyone is in the same position.

If you are really worrying about the afterlife because your actions could damn you for eternity, any attempts are almost certainly going to be futile. There have been so many religions in the history of mankind, most likely you will sent to a land of ice because you never slaughtered a chicken at the beginning of the summer solstice.

There is nothing cowardly about thinking your actions in this life are unlikely to help you in an afterlife. It is just common sense.

While I see where you are coming from, classes like these are not about staring kids along a career path. They are intended to get children excited about learning.

• I can easily see why a student would be more interested in learning physics and algebra when it is used to get a robotic arm to lift a ball for a robotics competition than it is having them solve equations.
• The basic level of cyber-security you would teach a high school student is likely to be useful to any citizen, and is probably not intended to train them as a cyber-security specialist.
• Basic programming that would allow students to write basic scripts, Excel macros, SQL queries, etc. are starting to become more useful to a wide range of jobs (basically anyone who would ever look at an Excel spreadsheet). My wife is a demand planning analyst with no programming training and is finding knowing SQL and VBA is very useful.
• I'm not sure how Pre-Engineering would be any different than any other set of Calculus / Physics / etc. classes that an advanced student would take in high school, since even college Freshmen / Sophomores are usually just taking Calculus / Physics / etc. in their first two years of an engineering program.

These classes are more job-related than just taking Algebra / History / English, but are not any more career track focused than wood shop class. IMHO

Considering my secondary education was 20 years ago, and I don't have close friends or coworkers with kids in high school, I am curious as to what career specialization you see in high school today. My experience from 20 years ago is that high schools were moving away from vocational classes such as shop or automotive and spending more energy into college prep-like classes. I would be very surprised to hear that high schools are starting to teach plumbing, electrical wiring, carpentry, etc. with greater zeal than they did in the past.

Nothing about "cradle-to-career" initiatives are centered on an over-emphasis on student tracking like they do in Germany. It is about the community taking responsibility for making sure all citizens in their early 20s have been properly prepared for a fulfilling career. I found this explanation from a publication about a local Crade-To-Grave initiative:

The goal of this work is that by the age of 23, all Evanston young adults will be leading productive lives, building on the resources, education, and support that they and their families have had to help them grow into resilient, educated, healthy, self-sufficient, and socially responsible adults.

Yeah, I know I am also horrified at the possibility my infant daughter might someday have to pursue a career. Will someone please think of the children?

Honestly, a corporate-driven training ground is exactly what school is. An argument could be made that post-secondary education is meant for expanding your horizons, but the goal of elementary and secondary education is to train a workforce. There is a reason why our schools are designed to create good factory workers and office drones. While I also would like school to change its primary goal, lets not be dishonest about what the main goal of public schooling has always been.

I have no idea how common VME developers are, but when dealing with legacy systems you do have to worry about being able to find qualified people to work on your software. Not only are the skills rare, but most people are going to be wary about pigeon-holing their career by focusing on such a obscure system. You will either have to rely on sub-par employees or pay well over market rates.

Hiring expensive employees / consultants may still be desirable over a risky migration, but the expense (either in salary or in low quality employees) shouldn't be ignored.

Chocolate has many of the key qualities that makes my wife want me to stop eating so much fried food, but I still don't think they are the same thing.

Saying that a belief system is religious in a way is a meaningless statement if all you then need to prove is there are a few similar qualities between religion and the belief system in question. Since religion is a belief system, then every single belief system is religious in a way.

Since most people are taught religion by their parents, by using your argument everything taught to you by your parents would be religious in a way.

Religion loses a lot of its meaning if any ideology can be considered a religion. A religion requires either supernatural beings or at least the belief in some kind of higher order to the world. Marxism is merely a belief that the relationship between labor and capital fostered by capitalism is not a desirable one. Many economic, sociological, and philosophical theories are derived from this belief, but again I see no reason why that crosses over to religion.

I believe the theories derived from Marxism are flawed, but not ridiculous. While I can see why those who believe Marxism is ridiculous draw parallels between Marxism and religion, but not every ridiculous belief system should automatically be considered a religion.

Just like car and convertible are frequently used in a synonymous fashion. "I am driving my convertible" means the same as "I am driving my car". But not all cars are convertibles just like not all faith is religious in nature. The fact that faith and religion have very different meanings and purposes is not changed by the fact that sometimes the two words are used to describe the same thing.

If all it takes to be considered supernatural is to have theories that haven't been validated yet, then I guess the wright brothers were starting their own religion before they got their first prototype working. I mean every other attempt to fly for thousands of years had failed so it was a pretty supernatural belief that humans could create flying machines.

I would hope our society is becoming advanced enough to jump straight to "all religion sucks" instead of having to dwell on criticizing a single religion as if today's terrorism is any different than the crusades. Its only the fact that the western world doesn't pay attention to our religions as much that makes our religions seem more enlightened.

Marxism is not a religion in any way. It has similar qualities of a religion, just like you can find similarities between a truck and a wheel barrel, but they are very different.

There is a reason why faith and religion are different words in the English language. Just because something requires faith does not make it religious in nature.

Just because you are paying something by watching advertisements, does not mean you are paying for it in full. Think of it more like the advertising is subsidizing part of your cable bill, not paying it in full.