They say there are two things you should never discuss on a first date or at a dinner party: religion and politics. But there has always been another subject that is so taboo that most people would rather arm wrestle over the other two than dare mention it.
That subject is class.
Americans have never liked discussing class status. Unlike our founding cousins over in England where your status is something bestowed upon you by birth, here we believe in a little something called the American Dream; the idea that any person regardless of race, religion or socio-economic background can become anything they want to be, including president.
But unfortunately that Dream is becoming increasingly out of reach for millions of Americans.
Though Madoff and the Wall Street meltdown have forced some of us to finally become more aware of the world beyond our comfortable middle and upper-middle class bubbles, another issue has been lurking for years that threatens to bring about even greater financial Armageddon for our country down the road: America's burgeoning dropout epidemic. Before you decide that this issue has nothing to do with you (and therefore decide to move on from this blog post) consider these facts for a moment:
• A 2008 study found that high school dropouts cost the American public more than $100 million a year.
• A 2009 study found that one high school dropout in Ohio will cost that state's taxpayers $200,000 from the time they dropout until they are 65 years of age.
• Every 29 seconds another American student becomes a dropout, meaning two (depending on how quickly you read) have dropped out since you began reading this post.
At a time when $100 million in bonuses for AIG execs was enough to drive many Americans to blind fury, it's amazing that so many Americans can sleep soundly at night as millions of our dollars essentially get up and walk out the door, every time another student gives up on his education and walks out of his classroom for the very last time.
So what's the solution? Like any complicated problem, solving it won't be easy but there are some steps we can all take. For one you can become a mentor. Unlike what it costs you when a kid drops out, this won't cost you anything but your time and mentoring is a proven dropout antidote.
But probably the most important step for all of us, is that we have to stop treating the issue like someone else's problem. You may not be a student, and you may not be the parent of a student who you consider at risk for dropping out, but if you are an American then this is an issue that affects you in some very real ways. According to a report conducted for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation: "Four out of every 10 young adults (ages 16 - 24) lacking a high school diploma received some type of government assistance in 2001, and a dropout is more than eight times as likely to be in jail or prison as a person with at least a high school diploma." Or as The Las Vegas Sun put it more bluntly in their headline: "Dropouts more likely to become Criminals." So caring about this issue is not only a matter of protecting your pocketbook, but of protecting our communities.
For this reason we should be treating America's dropout epidemic with the same measure of urgency, outrage and activism that has spurred us to tackle, and bring about positive social change -- on a range of issues -- from drunk driving, to AIDS Awareness, and even climate change.
Bill and Melinda Gates, whose foundation has focused on a number of global issues that are literally matters of life and death, have recognized the magnitude of this issue and made it a focal point of their philanthropic work. Recently they teamed up with media giant Viacom for a new pro-social campaign titled "Get Schooled". Perhaps the most significant aspect of their partnership is it recognizes the reality that if you want to actually change something in society, you have to meet people where they are, and the media (even with all of the changes it's undergoing at the moment) remains the most effective way to do that. Much like Lifetime Television effectively used its many platforms, including programming, an online petition and public service announcements to help pass the Debbie Smith Act on behalf of survivors of sexual assault, Viacom is making a similar commitment to combat the dropout rate, or as the Gates Foundation calls it, the silent epidemic. This is huge, because it finally elevates the issue from one that's been largely invisible, to one that will hopefully become just as important to the average celebrity, and by extension the average American, as the environment has become.
Remember, there was a time not too long ago when the average person thought climate change was some sort of college meteorology course, but former Vice-president Gore, helped in large part by his media megaphone -- a little film called An Inconvenient Truth -- helped change all of that. Hopefully the Get Schooled campaign and its various celebrity ambassadors can lead to similar enlightenment on this silent epidemic. (One celebrity spokesperson, actor Christian Slater, has already begun to break the silence on the issue, recently disclosing that he was a high school dropout before being motivated by his children to earn his GED.)
While speaking at a recent conference at Harvard Business School I was approached by a woman who said that she believed it would be impossible for our country to "produce another Barack Obama," someone from a socio-economically disadvantaged background who could rise to become president. From her vantage point there are simply too many obstacles today that render that American Dream no longer within reach.
Let's all work together to prove her wrong, and ending the silence around this epidemic is a good start.
The Republicans all should agree with these measures but all they do is shout about competition in schools, cutting education funding and cry for small government and no government interference.
We need to get rid of govt monopoly on education. Start at the top with the worthless money pit of education bureaucrats. Allow competition in schools, and let communities decide best form of education for their students.
Unfortunately, the unions won't allow this. They will exploit students to save their own behinds. "It's for the children" is their yellow bellied war cry. Everybody has to sacrifice right now except for these collectivist cowards, who are afraid leave the govt nest.
• A 2008 study found that high school dropouts cost the American public more than $100 million a year.
• A 2009 study found that one high school dropout in Ohio will cost that state's taxpayers $200,000 from the time they dropout until they are 65 years of age.
These guys have good insights - John Gatto and Alfie Kohn:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26DvPQ7EIQ4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G59KY7ek8Rk
You are right. They want to do what I call "school assignment essays" that require no critical thinking or challenges. I have also observed that they will respond "but I have never done this before" when their work is not perfect. I have to always respond...of course you haven't that is why you are here to know how to learn.
We need to use our computer technology to tailor the educational experience each student has to reflect their natural talents and interests. Once you have them experiencing the powerful forces of understanding and worldview expansion then seduce them into learning the tangential subjects that will give them a greater ability to problem solve. Automatons have very poor problem solving skills because they lack creative insight.
Computers are neither required as teaching tools nor do serious educators use them except as media tools. The best teaching in the world is done at universities with the help of a blackboard and someone who knows their field in and out. Our problem is that many of our teachers do not know their fields. Computers can not help to change that.
Kids can do that. They don't always like to, but they can when they are being given the information in the right order and at the right time in their development. And they pick up motivation to learn more easily once they have success in making use of the information for something other than the next test.
And therein lies the rub. We do not learn for the test. We learn for life. My teachers were good at making sure we got that message.
"Educating the youth of America against their will"
If they cared they would come up with something more substantial than the old "mentoring" ploy from the 80s.
I sure would like to meet some of them. No teacher I met in this country below the university level could hold their water in comparison to my high school teachers in Germany. And that's not surprising. A teacher in Germany is paid exceedingly well and gets a lot of perks from the government. It's a job worthy of a professional. Teaching over here is mistaken for a minimum wage type of affair for which a minimally prepared person is sufficient.
taught Spanish for 33 years, and ,yes, I could teach at a university level
in fact my level 4 students could compare to college courses
my students enjoyed my classes, in a small rural school with graduating classes of 40, I would have 24 in a level 4 class...
my results on the state test were usually 100% passing
and my daughter is now teaching HS calculus, she holds a degree in mechanical engineering as well as education.
and ,yes, thep ay could be better.
oh..and one of my best friends? a teacher in Germany...German native, teacher of English..she and I seem to be on the same wave length...
I'm not saying there are no social problems in cities, but we send a strong message to kids when we pack them into crowded facilities and herd them around like so many cattle. The charter school movement has only muddied the issue by siphoning off the kids with the savviest parents. No wonder these kids drop out.
The philanthropy community has been pushing mentoring forever. It ain't nothin new and is no panacea.
Canecl all teacher performance payments and tax those already paid at 90%, then cap the salaries of all superintendents and school principals.
Today's teacher, paid less than a cop, buys classroom materials out of pocket and has too many kids in classes, minimal materials and ages old books in schools that are too large. On top of that, the kids have to take meaningless tests to satisfy G.W. Bush's moronic NCLB. His Secy. Ed. was a political science major, BA only, so you see how serious the conman was. Bush's budgets never funded NCLB so it became an unfunded mandate on the local schools, hurting everything. Adding insult to all that injury, where will the graduate work? The jobs went to India.
Sorry, but the vast majority of dropouts are natural-born...um, the most charitable description I can come up with is "jerks." When they leave, their former teachers and classmates breathe a sigh of relief, as do the administrators who had to put up with their "shenanigans" each and every day.
But if you actually want to keep them in the system, then separate them from the students who actually want to learn by putting them in a vocational bootcamp, since they obviously care little for all that readin' an' 'ritin' jazz.
How about trying to fix the system and rally for teachers, instead of being a babysitter and replacement for some lazy parent? How about making parents responsible for the child's attendance at school? Oh, wait, this agenda doesn't hold people responsible; it just volunteers to undo their mistakes.
And, BTW, many posters have been presumptuous enough to claim that the problem is as they see it, and the solution, their own, is clear and desirable. The truth is, there's many problems all interconnected, which make education (and just about any other issue) a complicated issue, needing the realization that the problems complicating things are myriad, and so are the solutions. That is why I'm moderating my suggestion by calling it "one of the reasons", rather than "the reason".
Cheers!
The single mother who has to work several jobs to house her family is not a lazy parent because her kids appear valueless, rather the kids may appear so because they get most of their values from their peers, which is true in any case, just more pronounced when a single parent is way too tired to pass on her values effectively.
One of the reasons (you know, I had this paragraph perfect, and then lost it trying to split the post to satisfy word number requirements, and now I have to wait for it, so I'm going to post what I remembered so far, and if the rest comes to me and I still deem it relevant, I'll post that too, then.)
The point I'm trying to make is that ALL kids are EVERYBODY'S business, and we ALL have a responsibility in seeing to it that all kids get a level playing field, educationally speaking. Accepting and implementing this meme requires a paradigm shift in the many who think that all we're responsible for is ourselves, rather than we're all responsible for the Common Good.
But I digress. Oh, and as for making parents responsible for their kids' attendance, I can't imagine a more onerous way to make things more difficult for a single mom working several jobs. Make schools more interesting and relevant, rather!