What’s the point of high school for the majority of our kids? Even at a school as successful on paper as Cajon, most of the kids I see every day are literally having their time wasted by a curriculum that is at least 80 percent college preparatory. I know that in the last decade the concept of “school-to-work” connections, “career academies” and “smaller learning communities” has been all the rage. But the reality that I’ve seen is that most of these have been pretty ineffectual due to the counter-trend of steadily beefing up college prep curriculum requirements – to the point that virtually all high school students are required to follow a course of study that will qualify them for a four-year college, even though less than half have any mathematical hope of doing so.