It's hard for our children to feel good about succeeding in careers that do not require a four-year college education if we parents don't support their efforts.

It is time we dispel the myth that four years of college is essential to success.

Truck drivers are the 20th century equivalent to medieval knights, traveling all kinds of roads in all kinds of weather to make all of our lives a little better.

Meet Josh, my son the truck driver. I say this with a confidence and pride that were slow in developing for both me and my son. For my part, I was grossly misinformed about the advantages of a non-college career path, and, for his part, Josh spent several years trying to fit into a world that matched neither his interests nor his abilities.

He is not alone. According to the Census Bureau, in 1994 only 35 percent of 18-to-24-year-olds were enrolled in college. The number improves some when you consider only high school graduates; yet, even then, in 1994 less than half (42 percent) of high school graduates in this age group attended college.

At the same time, most public schools, and most of us middle class parents, concentrate on only one career path for our children--one that begins with a baccalaureate degree. This emphasis has led educators such as Maurice Dutton to label non-four-year college bound students "the neglected majority" and to suggest quality technical education programs in high schools to parallel those of college bound students.

This is a step in the right direction, but programs alone will not help children such as Josh if we parents also don't improve our attitudes. It's hard for our children to feel good about succeeding in careers that do not require a four-year college education if we parents don't support their efforts. To that end, I have some suggestions for those of us with children in the neglected majority.

It is time we dispel the myth that four years of college is essential to success. We've all seen surveys like the one done by American Demographics in 1992 that shows average income of male college graduates 60 percent higher than their non-college counterparts.

Yet these figures are misleading, mostly because they include salaries for top-end college graduates (physicians, engineers, geophysicists) and low-end non-graduates (part-time minimum wage earners). The reality is closer to a 1994 survey of Minnesota wage earners, which shows that brick layers make about as much as school teachers, electricians earn about the same as social workers, and cabinet makers take home about the same as members of the clergy. And while many business owners have four-year college degrees, many do not (Currently, the world's richest man is a Harvard dropout).

My point is not to dismiss the value of an education but to broaden it. We do need an education to succeed in life. It's just that this training also might be found in a vocational school, two-year college, an on-the-job apprenticeship, or in the Armed Services. And while an appreciation of the liberal arts is important (a knowledge of things such as history, literature, and the arts), we can acquire it apart from a liberal arts college.

Finally, we need to learn to value our children's choices. For instance, I have discovered that there are over three million truck drivers in the U. S. who collectively travel over 152 billion miles per year to deliver 78 percent of this nation's freight. Truck drivers are the 20th century equivalent to medieval knights, traveling all kinds of roads in all kinds of weather to make all of our lives a little better. What I need is a bumper sticker: "I'm a truck driver's dad."