[Farmgirl22]

I was watching the nightly news with Katie Couric (first time ever...) and there was a segment on the high rates of high school dropouts. Colin Powell was sharing his reasoning behind why kids were dropping out--namely bad parenting. He never came out and stated it, but he hinted very strongly.

Honestly, I don't know that it's bad parenting as much as a large assortment of things. Here's my list, feel free to add to them or disagree with them.

1) Bad parenting--yes, I agree it's PART of the problem
2) Students being pushed too hard
3) Class requirements that aren't terribly applicable to anything
4) Poor teaching (that includes subpar teachers because of low teaching wages, etc.)
5) Putting school activities before education
6) Communities (seems like it's mostly in urban areas that this is a MAJOR problem)

That's all I've got for now, I'm sure I'll think of more stuff later. I'm actually leaning most heavily on the students being pushed too hard--they have too much going on...sports, extremely active social lives, too many distractions (i.e. cell phones, cable television, etc.), and their parents aren't regulating their lifestyle and teaching them that responsibilities come before fun. I DO think that subpar teachers have a lot to do with it too--which isn't entirely the teachers fault...if the job paid better, they might be more motivated, or more qualified teachers might stay on.

Another problem I think is part of the outdated education that is being taught in schools. When I was in high school (2002) the curriculum I was taught wasn't all that different than the curriculum my parents had 20 years earlier--times have changed, why hasn't education? I think that the no child left behind program made this problem 100 times worse.

The schools put activities BEFORE education...this has been going on since the dawn of education I think, but since we're rapidly falling behind other countries in intelligence (I'm not sure that's exactly what I mean, but I'll leave it because nothing else sounds better) we need to step up, and make education one of our TOP priorities.