Cory Doctorow, sci-fi author, blogger and general king-geek, posts about the troubling development of US high schools asking freshmen to declare a "major".
I have to agree with Cory on this one. In eighth grade I took one of those aptitude tests that were so popular at the time and I was told that the best career choice for me was becoming a park ranger. Anyone that knows me knows I’m not the "one-with-nature" type so that career path was a non-starter.
To be honest I’m 40 years old and I still don’t know what I’m going to be when I grow up, so I can’t imagine asking my teenagers to figure out what they want to do their first year of high school. What I do want them to do is learn, explore and try new things and not kill or seriously maim themselves in the process. I figure we’ll have been successful if we look back 15 years from now and see that our kids found something in life that they’re passionate about, do it to the best of their ability and make a positive contribution to society in the process.
What I want my kids to see is that the learning process is what’s important, not the test grade. Memorizing a math formula is worthless without learning how to apply it; memorizing historic dates is irrelevant without understanding the context of each historical event; learning to diagram a sentence is a waste of time if you don’t learn to communicate your thoughts and feelings with your writing. I’m not saying that my kids shouldn’t learn the importance of working hard even when the subject is "boring", that’s as important to learn as the Pythagorean Theorem, but I am saying that they need to see that learning in and of itself is a vital component of realizing their dreams, whatever they may be. If their school asks them to decide in 9th grade whether they’re going to be an artist or a scientist then the school is doing them a supreme disservice.
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Befuddled 
Actually, this is a reversion. I have my father’s high school yearbook (Reynolds) from 1941. Students back then DID elect a course of study. Some of the ones in the W-S high school yearbook (one book for all 3 schools, only seniors given space) include:
General Course
Scientific Course
Commercial Course
Industrial Arts Course
Modern Language Course
Latin Course
With college costs as high as they are today, maybe giving students a chance to concentrate more on one area over another is good. And I don’t think it limits what a student will become by any means. My father and his twin brother both did General Course and one became an international economist and the other a manager of a train transport company.
I think this is hysteria over nothing, in other words. Certain basics are still going to be required of all kids, but if one kid wants to have more art time and another more chem lab time, I say give it to them. Maybe that will staunch the boredom and disillusionment from which some high schoolers suffer.
You make some good points, but playing devil’s advocate I can see this becoming a problem in certain situations. One of my roommates in college was from Scotland and he explained to me that when kids took their exams to move up to high school they knew that if they performed poorly they’d end up at what he described as a kind of trade school. Those who did well ended up in schools that were intended to prepare them for university. So literally an exam administered to 8th graders was a huge determinant on the rest of their lives.
You’re right that this might be hysteria at this point, especially since the kids get to choose the course concentration, but witnessing the ill effects of No Child Left Behind in its short lifespan leads me to wonder exactly how far these programs might go. Basically I can easily foresee a situation where a kid picks one course of study, changes her mind after a year and then is denied a transfer to another course because the school is worried that they’ll be judged harshly on the number of students who leave certain programs. Sounds crazy, but we have an acquaintance who wants to hold her child back because he had really bad grades but they said he should move on to avoide the stigmatization of being held back. Of course that’s utter B.S.; they’re just worried about their numbers, the best interest of the kid be-damned.
All of that said I think that kids should be offered non-traditional opportunities. If a kid hates math, english, etc. but loves working with cars why not let him work toward getting a mechanics certification while he’s struggling to learn algebra. I’m pretty sure it would keep him engaged in school which is best for everyone.
As for boredom, I’d say that courses led with little imagination or enthusiasm are as responsible as the subjects themselves. I can think of several classes that I dreaded because I thought they’d be boring only to find that I enjoyed them immensely thanks to the teacher, and I can think of even more classes that should have been interesting that were turned into torture by pedantic, robotic teachers.