One of my classmates (class of '86) finished 12th grade, but already knowing she was “dropping out” of her college dreams. Her father’s illness made her the only person in the family capable of holding a job (because she’d already held summer jobs temping at the courthouse, she was able to get a job there, which meant morning hours only and no problems at all with “I have to take Dad to the hospital” days); her personality made her the only one capable of looking at the situation right in the eye; her knowledge of English and science-track background meant that she was able to speak directly to the doctors assigned to the case (in fact, they got the American oncologist who was doing a two-year “stage” because she could speak with him) and get clear answers to her questions. Her father happened to get sick when we were in 12th grade, so she finished; if he’d gotten sick a couple of years earlier she would have had to drop out as well but with much worse employment prospects, not due to the lack of a HS education (no HS diploma for us) but because she wouldn’t have had those two summers working at the courthouse.
For my cohort, a much worse problem was the eternal non-students, people who hadn’t gotten their Compulsory Education Certificate and who were retaking 8th grade again and again and again… while living with their parents and not holding jobs because “I have to study!” Two of them finally moved into their flat when pregnant with their third child, after every other teen and 20-something in town had sent them to Coventry for “abusing parental goodwill” and “dropping babies like Hansel and Gretel dropped pebbles”.
The Australian Education system is different to the US, but I went to high school with several people who dropped out to get an apprenticeship in a trade, and that’s still common now. Can work out fine.
Aye, and clued up Americans already do this.
I’m happy to go as far as to say that parents whom just shuffle their kids off to school, let the schools raise them and then chuck money at a college, thinking they’ve done right by their children, are sorely mistaken.
That’s a bit scary. I took 3 of the 5 tests required to earn a GED (in PA) in 2004 (never got around to taking the other 2), and they were amazingly simple, far easier than taking a test in high school. Read a few paragraphs of text with relevant information, answer multiple choice questions or write a simple statement. The answers were right there. Anyone with decent reading comprehension could get a very high score on the tests I took.
Regarding the homeschooled kids: some of them aren’t “dropping out” so much as briefly “dropping in”. Two of my goddaughters (sisters) were homeschooled from elementary school on. When they reached high school age, they decided they wanted to try school-schooling. One of them took to it like a fish to water, scored straight A’s, had a blast and graduated in the top of her class. The other was less satisfied with the curriculum and the other students and the teaching methods. She scored straight A’s, and stopped going after 2 years and took her GED.
I’m not sure sister 2 is a “dropout”. I think she tried something new to her and found it wasn’t a great fit, so changed her educational approach to something that worked better for her.
I took the GED. It is a test for morons. I’m not a genius by any means, but I finished in about 1/6 the time allotted for the test, and got an “Einstein” award for my score.
Even at age 19, I was shocked that was the criteria deemed equivalent for graduation. If that is the equivalent, then most average and above kids could drop out in 8th grade, pass the GED and go on to whatever. I’m not saying they should, I’m just saying they could.
High schools, and entire school districts, vary enormously across the US. I went to an excellent school and was able to take college-level courses as a junior there. I know of other schools which were really nothing more than warehouses for minors and so many of the kids were barely literate when handed their diploma.
If you think about it, “decent reading comprehension” really is the key fundamental you need to pick up during primary education, everything else is gravy. If you can actually read and comprehend what you read, and do basic arithmetic, you have the foundation for further learning. GED isn’t testing to see if you’re an honor student, it’s testing to prove you have the basics… something all too sadly lacking in too many high school graduates. If you are literate you can educate yourself via the public library, the internet, and other available resources.
There are a still a lot of high schools you can graduate from simply by showing up a sufficient number of days in the year, and not need to actually learn anything. The GED, while simple on a certain level, is a demonstration of actual ability.
Perhaps it is different in Missouri, but I don’t feel like the test I did was particularly easy. (I took it in 2011.)
I definitely know most of my friends from high school couldn’t do the math sections and likely wouldn’t be able to do the essay since we weren’t properly taught in school how to do one.
The reading comprehension was somewhat easy, but required knowledge of some biology terms (on my test) that I feel like a lot of people may have forgotten.
I don’t know, I definitely don’t think it’s a ‘test for morons’.
I think a lot of the responses above are not so much dropping out as *skipping ahead in the sense that the people noted were smart enough to go on to college while younger-than-typically-college-aged. We see extreme examples in the news when 12-year-old geniuses are finishing their PhD’s in Quantum physics, Geology, Medicine, and Music (simultaneously!); the people jumping into college at 16 are ahead-of-their-pack as well, just to a lesser degree. There are also those who realize the social and micro-political games in high school are distractions to learning and just ditch The Scene to concentrate on real learning and maybe real job/profession/trade/career goals. A lot of kids did that during the Dot-Com boom, making big bucks to build web pages for all the companies that needed to get in on the Internet advertising fad.
I think of ‘dropping out’ more in scenarios like the teen Moms who have to earn a living to support the kid, or dutiful offspring abandoning their educational path to help foot the bills for ailing parents. And even those types seem sidetracked by circumstance rather than foolishly dropping out because there’s no reason to believe they won’t go back and finish if/when the opportunity arises.
The foolish form of dropping out is the kids who figure they already know all they need to know and drop out to shack up with some ‘benefactor’ or get a job working at the record store. That kind of inability to see beyond the next paycheck tends to be a waste of potential – if only potential skilled labor. It is astoundingly naive to think your needs and circumstances will never change beyond what is fulfilling your life now. For the average kid, it’s better to stick it out for a couple more months and get the little paper that says, “Maynard was tenacious enough to finish what his parents made him start.” Without a high school diploma or GED, the military can’t even use you as canon fodder.
*In contrast, my stepdaughter absolutely thrived on that high school drama stuff and, now that she’s in the real world maxed out her promotions in a fertilizer plant’s stock yard, sorely wishes she had paid more attention to the teachers and less attention to the cliques and hallway competitions.
–G!
Stay tuned for some comments on the Sociology of Education
My step-daughter dropped out when she figured out that she had prettywell learned how to game the system, there wasn’t much left to learn that would be useful, and got bored with the rest of the drama. She went back a year later and finished with a high GPA. She might have really needed that break.
Frankly, if more of the kids that don’t want to be there and only go because they are forced by law or parents would drop out, high school would be a much better place for everyone else. As is, they are a terrible place to attempt to get any sort of education.
Not that these dregs are the only problem, but getting them the hell out of there would be a step towards fixing things.
This. I dropped out due to issues with changing schools, different social environment, and other issues. When i did take the GED a few years later i decided to take some refresher classes at the local adult ed offices. After the first practice test 2 weeks into classes, the teacher pulled me aside, asked what i was doing there, and told me to just go take the test. I don’t recall anything math related on the GED that was more complicated that algebra 2/geometry, nor anything else that i would have taken past the 8th or ninth grade.
