"Even if it feels boring or irrelevant, just staying in school almost guarantees you’ll end up in a better place than if you dropped out.
Unfortunately, according to a recent report from America’s Promise Alliance, those factors rank among the top reasons why kids take themselves out of school:" …
http://www.techinsider.io/most-common-reasons-students-drop-out-of-high-school-2015-10
From those people who I know who dropped high school or just barely finished, it was either the inability to finish or a feeling that it would never matter. Frankly, a lot of that is the fault of the education system - a good education system is one that makes the weaker students interested and willing to learn the core academics.
Trade/workshop classes, as schools used to have but slowly phased out, would help to see practical benefits. So would “real life applications” for the core academic subjects. Not everyone is meant for school, but finishing high school is doable and valuable for everyone.
I agree wholeheartedly. I am probably never going to need to know who won the Battle of 1812 or how to speak Middle English or who Beowulf is unless I go play trivia. I had the opportunity to go do a trade school where I’d spend half my time over there and half at my real school. I’d learn stuff like welding or circuitry (idk if it’s called that) if I went. I opted out of that and stayed at my school and now I sorely regret it. Don’t get me wrong, I love all my classes like Literature and History, but I still fail to see why it is mandatory.
But yes, I’d argue that it is a necessary evil to get through all those “unnecessary” classes to finish high school, so that you have a better shot at getting into college (not saying drop outs who eventually earn their GED don’t have a chance, but it is significantly less), where (after freshman year) you’ll do classes specific to your major and interest.
PS: The one class I thought would be beneficial was Mircoeconomics because I thought it would better prepare me to handle my finances and help me understand the economy. Halfway done with semester and… yeah, I didn’t learn a single thing yet.
I always found school boring, but I found menial labor even more boring. I considered dropping out at every level, but I ended up with a Master’s. It was often dull but seldom that difficult. If I had to go to school in the “teach to the test” environment and pass four years of math in high school I’m not sure I’d make it.
^ Boredom as reason #2. I figured that the number 1 reasons would be caring for incapacitated parents and/or having to work, both of which were up there.
@mstomper says, menial labor is really boring. And without a good education, it’s probably for a lifetime.
The world is full of necessary tasks that may or may not be to one’s liking. It’s not a bad life lesson to learn as a teenager that sometimes you have to suck it up and complete the task.
My understanding is that (at least in some states) if a kid’s under age 18, parents have to consent to allow the kid to drop out. So some of these cases are family decisions. That makes me very sad.
If his/her parents don’t value school, what chance does a child have of being willing to commit so much effort to it? It tends to be a multi-generational problem.
I completely agree with @NeoDymium, and I would expand this to the child’s peer group as well. I hear story after story about how, in the most troubled areas and usually in cities, kids that take school and grades seriously can be subjected to intense harassment. I hear this mostly about predominantly African-American schools, and that the kids that want to do well in school and break out of the cycle are essentially thought of as “Uncle Toms”, although I am sure they are called worse. When it not only isn’t cool to be a good student but can actually be dangerous, it is hard to see how the problem can be solved in any significant numbers. This is why so many parents in these kinds of neighborhoods are in favor of vouchers, charter schools, and magnet schools.
The polar opposite of this situation was when I was growing up. Even though no one in my family had gone to college, we were lucky enough to have a house in a suburban St. Louis school district where virtually all the other families were college educated and 99% of the high school graduates went on to college. Even though it was a public school, each graduating class was only about 200 students. It was the closest thing to a private school a public school could be. My point is that it wasn’t until sometime during my junior year of high school that I even became aware that not everyone went to college, despite the fact that my parents didn’t go. I guess I just figured that was because of WWII and was a relic of the past and that everything had changed. Embarrassingly naive, I know. So the idea of not going to college never even occurred to me, much less not finishing high school.
Environment and peer expectations make a huge difference, and I think many of the programs for inner city and other troubled areas have only recently started to address this in any meaningful way, and very spottily. Some are private (the programs, not the schools). It is a very difficult issue to address.
One simple step might go a long way towards reducing dropout rates at troubled schools. During the first week of school, call an assembly of all the kids in a given grade. Beam three pictures up on a screen: a sports car, a Honda Civic, and a rust bucket of whatever make and model floats the principal’s boat. Say something like “Go to college, and you might own the sports car. Finish high school, and the Civic could be in your future. Drop out, and you’ll be lucky if you can afford the pile of junk.” Illustrate the point with a few figures on the average earnings of dropouts (in 2012 they earned an average of $20,241 a year, or about 35% of what college graduates take home). Show some more flashy goods you can buy with the $36,000 difference in income. Wish them a good year, free of dropouts.
Appeals to students’ self-respect, and desire to do well work best on those least likely to drop out. Although I’d imagine the above idea would be met with hostility by parents who likely never attended college, it might hit home with people who have trouble choosing the long-term benefits of graduating from high school over the short-term urge to skip class. Not that such a harangue is likely to be seen in most school districts.
I’ll also note that 10% of dropouts cited pregnancy as a reason for leaving school, so perhaps the abstinence-only sex ed crowd wants to consider the real consequences of their crusade against anything resembling an explanation of birth control methods.
Trouble is, people really don’t think as far ahead as that. I was surprised, for example, how few college freshmen I talked to really were considering what they wanted to do with their careers, and I know the problem is even worse in HS and earlier. They think mostly what’s right in front of them: grueling schoolwork, vs. the relatively appealing prospect of predictable, paying work that gives money that seems like a lot to a young person.
Also, some people simply are not meant for college, and they shouldn’t be pushed to go there if they don’t belong. We as a culture failed to create a system where people are placed into good positions based on their ability, in which there is a place for low education workers to do meaningful paying work. Partly economic, partly a result of the fact that we push people into college when they aren’t cut out for it and will just accumulate debt.
Don’t more boys drop out of high schools than girls?
Boys are generally far more likely to join gangs, use and abuse drugs/alcohol, and have disciplinary issues in high school. They also have more trouble forgoing short term pleasure for long term rewards in general. Our school, in seeking to prevent this by educating us about the problem, has offered what seems to be the prevailing explanation, and I’ll try to summarize it briefly here. I’m no neuroscientist, so don’t take any of this as gospel truth.
The short version: Teenage boys are naturally bad at impulse control for biological reasons. This means they tend to make poor decisions (like dropping out of school) or engage in the above behaviors (which often lead to dropping out).
The longer version: The prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain that deals with impulse control) generally develops fully only at the end of puberty. Until that happens, the most active part of a teenager’s brain is the area (which has a name I can’t recall) that responds to pleasurable stimuli - like the sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll that more mature folks have been complaining about since time immemorial. That part of the brain is also known as the ‘reptilian brain,’ and the name is apt - when it’s dominant, teenagers’ ability to control their impulses and favor long-term gain over short-term pleasure is on a par with that of a snake (and that’s being unkind to the snake, who can patiently lie in wait for its prey when necessary).
Girls are fortunate in that, since they undergo puberty at an earlier age, their prefrontal cortex will be fully developed by their sophomore or junior year in most cases. The danger period generally lasts through the latter years of middle school and/or their freshman year (though there are always outliers). Boys aren’t as lucky - for much of high school, and especially during their all-important (for colleges) sophomore and junior years, they’ll be at their worst insofar as rational decision-making and their motivation to complete unpleasant-but-necessary work is concerned. This hurts their performance in school, and increases the likelihood of their making decisions that’ll foreclose a lot of options even when they’ve matured - whether because they earned poor grades, because they dropped out of school, or because they’re living in an overcrowded prison cell.
There are exceptions of course - many boys don’t have any of the above issues (strong impulse control is a heritable trait, so often these boys will also have parents who make sure they’re not going off the rails). Some will be fortunate enough to undergo puberty sooner - these are the kids who have so-so grades in middle school or freshman year, but straighten out in high school. Others will mostly avoid such issues in high school, but then make poor choices in college.*
*I suspect, although this is just politically incorrect conjecture that hasn’t been confirmed or denied by academic research, that those who commit sexual assault in college (a group, we can all agree, with terrible impulse control) probably went through puberty a year or two later (on average) than the general population. I don’t want to be misunderstood - I’m saying that many such people likely went through puberty later, and not that late bloomers are all rapists.
The upshot is that, as the neuroscience shows, boys tend to make poor decisions at a higher rate than girls in high school. This disparity is seen in the gender distribution you’ll find among college freshmen each year (skewed towards girls) and I suspect the higher dropout rates observed among boys are a result of the same phenomenon.
@NotVerySmart I can kind of relate to what you are saying from personal experience. I’m a 17 year old Senior in high school and I went through puberty at a fairly early age and my worst years of school were 7th & 8th grade. In middle school I easily got the worst grades of all my friends (I would consistently get C’s) but starting at around the 2nd Semester of 9th grade I was easily getting the best grades of my friends. (Mind you that my group of friends has hardly changed during that time period) I went from being a C student in Middle School (In Mostly Core Classes) to an A student (In AP Classes) in high school and I think it was really just a matter of maturity for me. My friends have gone from straight A students in middle school to C+/B- students in high school.
I know a couple of families who live in a community known for its good schools. Yes, they are good for conventional students, particularly girls. But for extremely bright kinda quirky boys? Not so much. My friend was at her wits’ end when her son dropped out at age 16. He got his GED with no problem and found a better fit at community college. At age 18 he decided he needed to get his act together. He is now in grad school in a STEM field.
Do you guys think a high school/college diploma is also a sign of persistency through adverse times and the genuine development of internally strong character? We have lives to return to, we sacrifice free time, etc. in order to accomplish our academic responsibilities. Employers know we aren’t passionate about every subject (or in some cases, any) but I feel like knowing that we swallow our devil-may-care attitude in order to finish what we have started at a young age goes a long way, I’m curious as to how other people/job employers see it.
@NeoDymium I wholeheartedly agree, speaking from personal experience I was passionate about math/science as a kid and wouldn’t care about english/history, I can see that foundation applying to my current high school life with my interest level (and thus, yield) in math/science vs that of eng/history broadening greatly. No matter how much effort I put into my AP english/history classes, I easily fall well behind the rest of the class, which I attribute to a better foundation and thus more interest as a kid.
In theory, a good well balanced spirit should be taught at a young age, and from those i have talked to, it is much harder to restore once our brains begin to solidify during puberty.
To all: Who’s fault is it that some students do not receive a proper foundation, and how do we restore the problem to allow the students who, for example, drop out of boredom to continue? The most vital time in their academic lives is elementary school, where they learn the blueprints for future success
School retention is a funny thing sometimes. In our own system, they did some digging at the kids on the fringe of dropping out and followed up after graduation to see why they stayed. What they found was that many of them stayed because they wanted to play foot/basket/volley/etc ball. This address the two top reasons, and turns out that sports is a very cost effective retention tool.
Not just sports though. There are a lot of things that should be part of a school system (sports, trade education such as woodworking/etc., clubs, social activities) that matter as much as academics do. Not everyone is cut out for academics and while just about everyone is capable of finishing high school, it’s hard to do for anyone. That’s why we need external motivation, and for some people these other activities qualify.
at the very time of rapid changes both physically and mentally/socially…we demand young people show up to start school at 730 or earlier 5 days a week. (waking up at 530 or 545 for many students) that in itself is a major hurdle. forcing student to sit in many classes day after day year after year that are not needed is another burden. other issues arise out of students control but these two are big ones. I spent many days in high school feeling like a prisoner entering school when it was still dark outside. classrooms with no windows, busy work etc…not to mention the standard issues of bully’s , peer pressure etc…if my parents did not force me to go to school I could see that maybe dropping out was an option (which would have been a terrible mistake…) college is much much much better …you have more freedom all around. and I benefited tremendously from having the privilege of attending college.
That exposes a major problem with the mindset of middle-high school students. They think they can’t care at all about grades or anything because they’ll become a professional athlete. Except they soon realize how competitive athletics are and how they didn’t train enough; they’re beaten out by the real professionals.
Well, at least it’s good to know that there are high schoolers who drop out to get a job or make the USA IOI team after getting accepted to MIT once they realize how silly high school is.