I am a product of the Detroit Public School System. I graduated from the prestigious Cass Technical High School in 1974, (Michigan State two years later). The curriculum offered there was practically unprecedented in public school education at the time, but it was representative of the mentality that fueled our nation's public schools. Cass Tech was both "college prep" and "trade school" at the same time. The students were required to choose a 'major'. On offer was everything from auto mechanics, to chem/bio with all manner of specialties in between. My 'major' was Vocational Music, not to be confused with 'Avocational Music' which was also on offer. When I later studied at The Mannes College Of Music in NYC, I was able to skip the first two years of conservatory-level classical music theory, because I had already studied it thoroughly in high school. The same could be said of most of my school colleagues, regardless of their field of further study or immediate employment. The chem-bio students were shoo-ins for pre-med, while those that had studied auto mechanics were immediately hired by one of The Big Three. What did the auto geeks share with the book-worms and us artsy types? A well-rounded Liberal Arts curriculum.
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