Jim of Jim's Journal did a piece that I featured here, about the glory of the American Melting Pot. Today, however, he emailed about a less happy American circumstance:

Brian,

Here's a situation you might be interested in mentioning in your Education Blog:

A 15 year-old girl in New York City has successfully completed 71 credits at two public community colleges in New York City. A full-time college student would normally complete between sixty and seventy credits during two years of study. (Community colleges in the U.S. typically offer Associate of Arts or Associate of Science degrees after that amount of study; for some students that is the ompletion of their college career but many then go on to complete a B.A. or B.S. degree at a full college or niversity. I'm not sure if there is a British equivalent or not.) She earned a 3.84 cumulative average while doing this; that is pretty close to being a straight A average.

Recently the girl and her parents sued in an attempt for her to receive a degree. In the U.S. and Canada there is something called a G.E.D. (General Equivalency Diploma). It was intended for people who dropped out of high school but then later in life needed a high school diploma, either because of employment requirements or in order to enroll in higher education. Apparently the community colleges allowed anyone to take courses, but high school graduation (or a GED) was a requirement for official admission to a degree program. New York State said she had to be at least 17 years old to take the tests leading to a GED. Thus, a suit to force New York to let her get a GED so she could get her associate's degree and enroll in a bachelor's degree program.

The judge ruled against them and was harshly critical of her father for allowing her to take college courses instead of attending high school. He also noted that it would have been legal for him to have her be a Home Schooled student, but allowing her to attend college was illegal.

Not only that, but now New York City's child protective services division has launched an investigation and is threatening her father with prosecution for "educational neglect" for allowing her to skip high school. This from a city with a notoriously poor public school system. Pregnant 15-year-old drug addicts are normal but allowing bright children to attend college is a horror that must be stamped out at once. The idiocy of the education bureaucracy and the Big Nanny social enforcement bureaucracy is truly beyond belief.

More in the Daily News and the New York Post.

Regards,

Jim