next »

[jackofallchem]

I found the following article interesting for several reasons.  The first thing I found interesting the idea of forcing students to stay in school until they were 18 even though they really wanted to drop out was a good thing.  The second was that the only thing anyone cared about was the dropout rate.  No one seemed to care about education or learning or anything.  They just care about the kids being in the seats until they are 18.  The people in favor of the program say it will get the kids to stay in the seats until they are 18 and their opponents say the students just won't come to school.  No one mentioned better education.  I can't say that I see much education going on in the schools and you know that if someone is only there because the law is forcing them to, they are going to make sure they don't learn anything. 

Utter nonsense.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/percolator/sorry-youre-not-allowed-to-drop-out-please-resume-learning/28501

[kromlooper]

Mandatory schooling is downright offensive.

[fiona]

So what will you do with a very large number of people who can't/won't learn to read and therefore can't be responsive citizens?

It's easy to push around and oppress illiterate people.

The Fiona

[jackofallchem]

So what will you do with a very large number of people who can't/won't learn to read and therefore can't be responsive citizens?

Judging by the state of things, we elect them to Congress or let them work on Wall Street and in the banking sector. 

You can't force people to learn or work.  It isn't like you can't go back to school after you drop out and find that life isn't so great when McDonald's thinks you lack job skills, Mom and Dad cut off your allowance, and you have to move out of the basement.  There are a lot of programs at tech schools where you can get good-paying useful, needed jobs skills and they don't take a lot of time or money.   Not everyone wants to get an education, not everyone wants to go to college.  Forcing them to sit in a college-prep geared classroom for another year or two won't fix anything.  It is just a waste of their time and they know it.  That is why they dropped out. 

[fiona]

We have compulsory school laws so as to enable people to have jobs and stay off the streets and out of meth labs.

Free, compulsory public education has been around for 100 years in the U. S. because it is good for our country.

It also keeps young people off the streets and aids public safety.

Would you substitute jails?

The Fiona

[monsterx]

We have compulsory school laws so as to enable people to have jobs and stay off the streets and out of meth labs.
Free, compulsory public education has been around for 100 years in the U. S. because it is good for our country.
It also keeps young people off the streets and aids public safety.
Would you substitute jails?
The Fiona

The question of whether school should be compulsory until 18 is a different one than whether it should be compulsory at all (until 16 for example). 

[zharkov]

We have compulsory school laws so as to enable people to have jobs and stay off the streets and out of meth labs.
Free, compulsory public education has been around for 100 years in the U. S. because it is good for our country.
It also keeps young people off the streets and aids public safety.
Would you substitute jails?
The Fiona

The question of whether school should be compulsory until 18 is a different one than whether it should be compulsory at all (until 16 for example). 

Right, and 16 probably made some sense back in the day when someone could quit school (at 16) and get a job at a factory. 

[cgfunmathguy]

Compulsory schooling is a result of the child labor laws. After passage of said laws, there was no place to contain the urchins wandering the streets. Thus, compulsory schooling arose. At first, it was through the eighth grade. Later the limit was raised to age 16 or 17 (depending on the need for parental permission). These changes occurred in a piecemeal fashion throughout the states. Do we need to raise the age for compulsory attendance again? I'm not so sure we do, but I'm also not so sure we've done anything right in education policy for the last 20 years.

[glenwood]

We have compulsory school laws so as to enable people to have jobs and stay off the streets and out of meth labs.
Free, compulsory public education has been around for 100 years in the U. S. because it is good for our country.
It also keeps young people off the streets and aids public safety.
Would you substitute jails?
The Fiona

The question of whether school should be compulsory until 18 is a different one than whether it should be compulsory at all (until 16 for example). 

Right, and 16 probably made some sense back in the day when someone could quit school (at 16) and get a job at a factory. 

The arguments here seem totally unrelated to the research discussed in the article. The research indicates that the higher mandatory age doesn't keep young people off the streets or out of jail. Currently, in comparisons of states with different ages for the end of compulsory schooling, the higher age makes little or no difference when it comes to keeping people in school.

[prytania3]

Many states make education until 18 compulsary. Connecticut is now one of them. Didn't stop Prylet from dropping out before he reached his 16th birthday.

[pigou]

Compulsory education until 18 (or until graduating high school, whichever is first) is a good idea, but it has to be more than in name only. That means no parental "opt-out" clause. In many cases, parents are just as short sighted as their children when it comes to the value of education. Guess what: I don't care that junior found work delivering pizzas. That's not a sustainable career, and we shouldn't pretend it is.

[prytania3]

Compulsory education until 18 (or until graduating high school, whichever is first) is a good idea, but it has to be more than in name only. That means no parental "opt-out" clause. In many cases, parents are just as short sighted as their children when it comes to the value of education. Guess what: I don't care that junior found work delivering pizzas. That's not a sustainable career, and we shouldn't pretend it is.

You can't keep a kid in school if he or she doesn't want to be there. Well, you could, I guess, if you had a huge police force dedicated to rooting out truants. So if you skip school enough, you go to reform school. Wow. That's a solution. Until you've had a kid that just says "no" to school, you have no idea what you're dealing with.

[jackofallchem]

We have compulsory school laws so as to enable people to have jobs and stay off the streets and out of meth labs.

Free, compulsory public education has been around for 100 years in the U. S. because it is good for our country.

It also keeps young people off the streets and aids public safety.

Would you substitute jails?

The Fiona

What do you mean, the schools ARE jails, now.  You walk by police officers through a metal detector to go in.  The staff all have their ID badges, like prison workers.  If you act up in class, the teachers can issue you a citation for disturbing the peace and you have to go before a judge and pay the fine.  Police wander the halls, randomly checking the lockers, the students, and the cars in parked within a 1 mile radius. People are 'randomly' pulled out for drug tests.  Despite this, drug dealing and drug use is rampant. You have to go until you serve your sentence.  You think I am exaggerating, but I can see how some of the kids see it this way.  When I hear what high school is like now, I am horrified.  I can't imagine how frightening it must be to be in that environment where if a teacher doesn't like you, you get tickets and can get jail time for asking a question that seems impertinent or talking to someone in class, where you can get searched and/or arrested by a police officer for seemingly any minor infraction. 

There are always kids who don't want to go to college.  They don't like school and the subjects there.  Making it compulsory won't change that.  How do YOU like it when the administration comes up with more mandatory work.  Even stuff you used to do voluntarily.  When its mandatory, its worse.  Many of these kids would be served very well by votech programs, but that is stigmatized to such an extent by society, by the teachers, and by school counselors that it is almost a crime to suggest that to a child.  I think my stepson should go to the votech program.  He has no interest in any subjects in school.  He doesn't study.  He doesn't read his textbooks, he doesn't like to read at all.  He likes to work on cars and motorcycles.  We looked up the auto mechanic programs, how to become an ASE master mechanic and how to get hired by a good dealership.  The problem is, his mother and grandmother think it is terrible that "I don't want him to go to college".  They think I am treating him like he is stupid for encouraging him to go to the votech program.  Look at all the education 'improvement" ideas.  All of them are geared towards a college-prep education, and so will fail all of the students who don't want to learn college material.  Look at your own students.  How many really don't want to learn anything.  They are in college because that is what they were supposed to do, not because it is what they wanted to do. 

Mandatory school until 18 isn't to educate students, it is to try to perpetuate the myth that they all should (and can) go to college.  It definitely isn't about preparing them to get productive jobs.  What is the wait time to get a plumber to your house?  Get your car worked on?  Your A/C?  In some areas, it can take weeks.  The plumbers in my parent's area refuse to come for any job under $500 and the wait list is long.  The area also has a 15% unemployment rate and a low high school dropout rate.  What's wrong with THAT picture.

[theritas]

I'm in the camp that students who do not wish to be in school after age 16 should be able to go out and find a job.  Some of them work so hard at not learning, that they practice the worst type of skills for the time they are wasting.  Even the most menial job would be an improvement over this.  Plus, many times this activity provides distractions (or worse) to those who are attempting to learn, and still costs the taxpayer the same (or more, in the case of damages, dealing with behavior problems, court costs, counseling, etc.)  Without an answer to motivate students to learn, forcing them to remain in school only makes things worse for everyone.  I'd rather invest the money in lifelong learning opportunities so that they are available if low income adults wish to return to school when they are truly ready to participate.

[eumaios]

It's true that high-school dropouts have less money and more problems than people with more education, but it doesn't follow that we can improve the situation by compelling teenagers who want to drop out to sit in the classrooms we currently have until they reach their eighteenth birthdays. Thinking that we'll get better outcomes by forcing more people to stay in school for another year or two years is delusional.

For one thing, high school is at least ten years too late to begin attacking the problem. When a 16-year-old can't read, write, or do simple arithmetic--and my first-year classes are full of 18-year-olds who have high-school diplomas and meet that description--forcing him to remain in his seat for another two years isn't going to result in his acquiring lots of knowledge and a better attitude toward learning. If we hope to improve outcomes in high schools, we have to improve outcomes much earlier. I'm pretty sure that teachers know how to do that; the challenge is political.

Second, we need to bring back vocational training and trade schools at the high-school level. We have a number of programs at my cc that people should be able to begin at 15 or 16. The shop facilities in our local high schools (if they have any at all) aren't nearly as good as the shop classes that my high school had back in the 1970s--and we also had an arrangement with an excellent regional vo-tech school. Where I live now, a kid who isn't in AP classes (or a football star) has little reason to stay in high school. He might as well drop out, get a GED, and then enroll at the community college, beginning with remedial courses. If he stays in high school, he'll take those same remedial cc courses anyway, but a year or two years later. He's not going to learn anything in the last two years of high school that will help him earn a paycheck. He might not learn anything at all in the last two years of high school; if the kid's smart, he'll find a way to begin his vocational training at the cc as early as possible. Vocational, trade, or shop classes at the high school might induce more students to stay in school.

Vocational and trade programs, though, are very expensive. I can't imagine voters around here wanting to spend the money to make them available to more high-school students.