(Oh, the Blog of Gloom and Doom has gone on a cheery roll right  now. I probably should watch more comedy and take a pass on Nightmare on Elm Street next time.)

In my last post, I flashed to animal rights activist and scientist Temple Grandin and her serpentine ramp, designed to humanely lure cattle off to be slaughtered. Walking nose to tail, cow after cow will march down that ramp to the kill floor in semicircular turns, following curves that hide the abattoir and slaughterhouse workers.  

As groups of our high school population march off into student debt measured in chunks of thousands, I’d like to put those ramps front and center, perfect metaphors for the many college fairs, college lectures, and college field trips we offer students without regard for their financial circumstances or college readiness. How many students have signed on how many dotted lines, when every clue in their cumulative folders suggested we were sending them to the loan kill floor?

We talk about differentiation all the time. I’d like to suggest that differentiation is not just for class content. Students who can’t read or write beyond a fourth grade level? Who can’t do middle school math? If I were a counselor, I’d offer these students a realistic picture. I’d say, “Please don’t go to college unless you have a solid plan, at least not if you must take out loans to go to school. If you are determined and are willing to pay the community college for remediation classes, classes that will not count towards graduation, but will only prepare you to start actual college in a year or two, I am not saying don’t take your shot. But before you dig yourself into a hole, go on the internet and find out how much your remedial loans will cost you. How much will you have to pay over the next ten years? Plug in the numbers. Ask yourself if you are ready to pay those extra hundreds of dollars each month, year after year, for your community college classes. Will your plan take you to a place where your loan payments won’t be oppressive or even impossible to pay?”

I’d help the kid run those numbers, too — show my student exactly what sort of payments and obligations those remediation classes represented.

“Honestly, you could be better off using that money to buy a car to get to work instead,” I might end, depending on the plan and the kid.