Cassidy: College isn't for everyone

At the Central County Occupational Center in San Jose, there are many more meaningful measures of success.

Cassidy: College isn't for everyone

At the Central County Occupational Center in San Jose, there are many more meaningful measures of success.

Out past the old Freightliner truck and the ancient Ford CL-9000 cab, just beyond the Cummins Big Cam motor and after all the hours memorizing the innards of engines, lies the path to 18-year-old Veronica Bauer's future.

She is a member of the high school class of 2010, though her schooling is not what often comes to mind in Silicon Valley. Our region is a place obsessed about arming children with the tools to attend an elite university and then go on to invent the next big thing or run the next big company.

But for every Larry and Sergey or Filo and Yang, for every kid who can't wait to devise the next killer algorithm or tablet computer, there are kids who have a burning desire to work just as hard but at something more hands-on. The lucky ones end up in a place like the truck repair class at the Central County Occupational Center in San Jose.

"Not everybody learns by getting lectured at," Bauer says. In the truck class and in dozens of others in other disciplines at CCOC, as it's known, about 1,445 high school students learn by doing. "You see it. You rip it apart. You see what works. How it works. You learn by being in here, by getting the experience. That's the kick for me."

Ah, the kick. The kick that many high school students are missing.

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