newsobserver.com | Dropout rate, suspensions on rise in N.C.:
North Carolina high school students are dropping out in increasing numbers despite more efforts to keep them in school, prompting frustrated education leaders to call for raising the minimum dropout age from 16 to 18.
This is the opening paragraph of a story that appeared in today’s News & Observer, our Raleigh daily newspaper. The subcaption of the article’s title is, “Educators call on General Assembly to raise dropout age from 16 to 18 as they seek answers.” I have enormous respect for the state’s superintendent, June Atkinson — and know, first hand, that the Department of Public Instruction and school districts across the state are going to heroic efforts to solve this potentially devasting problem — within almost inpenetrable constraints.
But we all know that you can’t legislate a solution.
The solution is in our classrooms where we continue to school our children rather than prepare them for their future. Where, outside of school and in their future, are people spending all day doing…
This |
OR | This |
OK! OK! I’m not saying they shouldn’t be reading books or writing on paper. But too often, TOO OFTEN, this is the extent of their education experience, and it is so foreign to the world that they know. Marc Prensky talks about how we are immigrants to their digital world. What are they too our’s?
Article Citation:
Hui, Keung. Dropout Rate, Suspensions on rise in N.C..” The News & Observer [Raleigh]8 Feb 2008: A1.
Technorati Tags: warlick education highschool rant dropout
I think we need a balance. Somewhere along the line, these students will have to understand that life isn’t all entertainment. Better to come to that realization before they hit the workworld. On the otherhand, we must realize that it won’t be just pen and paper tasks either. How do we engage these students, get them to see the value of working and still prepare them for proficiency testing and the real world?
Students must learn that life is not all entertainment. Teachers must perform the juggling act of keeping students engaged, while giving them the skills they need to perform in their adult world. How do they do this and keep proficiency scores at passing? Its a combination of books, technology, pen and paper. But striking the best mix to promote the most learning is the key.
If we are immigrants to their world…
Then they (at least 6 hours/day) are captives in ours.
They survive, as do animals in captivity, by dining on what they are fed, rather than what they might prefer to hunt. Sure, reading and writing are ‘nutritious’, but a varied and interesting menu is necessary.
Given the choice, would they stay, or would they join their colleagues in ‘the wild’?
Education methods need reform, this is obvious and NCLB does not help. However, we can only do so much in the classroom! Where are the parents in all this? I have taught for 17 years now and I am sick of being blamed for all of society’s woes. When parents stops abdicating their parental responsibilities (especially the men), we will see a change. Stop blaming the teachers who work 12 hour days and then work weekends as well. Stop blaming the teacher who spends his/her time blogging with kids on weekends and evenings. Parenting skills are the obvious answer here. How to get there though is a looming question…
Well Rodd, it looks like the answer to your last question (in North Carolina anyway) is that they are heading to the wild. The dropout rate is increasing.
2 things:
First I want to confess that while most days (95% of the days, I’d say) I am completely gung-ho on technology-enhanced education there are other days where I sit back and say, what is so wrong with how we used to do things? What is wrong with making students uncomfortable so long as it eventually brings them to educational success? But that’s probably just the devil’s advocate in me. If it’s the extent of their education, in the 21st century, yes, that could pose a problem. But most of us transitioned nicely into the information age without public schools attending to it specifically.
Second, I agree with Mr Spicher who points the finger at the parents. Families take responsibility for themselves. My only son, a 5-year-old, is having a hard time with writing, after talking with his kindergarten teacher I decided that the best and fastest way to help him succeed is to help him myself at home. I can offer one-on-one attention, I understand his personality, I can offer punishments or rewards, I can figure out what helps him engage.
So that’s it.
Nothing personal, but I think we have already done an outstanding job of teaching our students that “life isn’t all entertainment.” Sit through a 9th grade English class in a school where the administration is riding the teachers hard about test scores and you will see that if those students are learning anyting, it’s that English isn’t entertaining.
Think back a minute folks. There are very few skills or ideas that I still use today that were taught to me in a bland, boring or unengaging way. Random facts from multiple-choice tests 20 years gone have long since been forgotten. The things I really remember are the BIG projects, the teachers who made me LOVE a story or concept, and the subjects that I CHOSE to study.
If we don’t engage them, they will either put up with us and then move on, or, if their parents care less, they will leave early. I can’t say I blame them.
As I read your post and some of the responses, I was thinking of something Marco Torres said today in his keynote at TCEA.
He said that it was his job to infect kids with enough curiosity today that they would want to come back tomorrow. And that if they came back tomorrow, he wanted to give them enough curiosity to come back the rest of the week.
I don’t think this is about entertainment. I think it’s about inviting students to learn, about creating an environment so compelling that they want to be a part of it.
It’s not that there aren’t many excellent educators making a dedicated effort. It’s that institutionally, we aren’t inviting students in. We’re running the institution of schools, too often, as that….institutions that aren’t flexible, that resist change, that aren’t customer(student)service oriented, and where students do not feel connected; high schools get so focused on the content and the testing, that the personal part gets lost.
I hear from many students that connection is the most important piece in keeping them in school. But I also think they have to have successes and some real world connection.
And I don’t think blaming students, parents, or school districts gets us anywhere.
We just need to be willing to consider what each of us could do better. We need to be open to possibilities.
I agree that legislation is not the answer. Students need to value education and teachers can only do so much to sell their product. The society as a whole needs to show the value of education. I don’t mean with public service announcements and half baked endorsements by sports figures either. Society much change it’s attitude on education and its value. Students value systems are skewed by ad agencies pushing products at them 24/7, TV shows that show them that a bad attitude and a smart mouth are all that matter and reality shows that are far from reality. Why not put efforts into marketing education? Treat education and school like it was a valued product. Make it so the farther you go in school means more to the students than what brand of sneakers they wear. Make going to school the “it” thing to do.
Yes, we all need to learn that sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do – but does that something have to be going to school and sitting through 6 or more hours of boredom? My goal is always to make the classroom fun. If the children (I teach 5th grade) are enjoying themselves, then learning follows. And sometimes, we do have to do some test prep or something equally deadly. But they know it is only a small part of the day and can, therefore, handle it better. My students want to be in school.
David,
I was completely with you until you added Prensky to the discussion.
The ugly reality I realized while doing my doctoral research inside a prison for teens is that there are kids who stop going to school in 5th-7th grade.
I’m truly struck by Carolyn Foote’s comments that basically schools are places for the system to work rather than students to learn. Research shows that teachers have the greatest impact on student success. Research shows that when students are responsible for their own learning, they are more engaged. Research shows that engaged students don’t drop out. We know HOW to do it… the system more often than not creates barriers… stands in the way. And the best way to engage students, as Carolyn reports, is to tap into their curiosity.
Education doesn’t have to be all about entertainment, but it can and should be made interesting for the students and as Carolyn so aptly put it, “so compelling that they want to be a part of it.” As a teacher, it is all about figuring out how to capture their attention with something that is cool or exciting or fun (or in my case tasty, I teach Culinary Arts). While they are doing this, they might not even realize it, but they are learning. Randy Pausch calls this “the head fake.”
Gary- I teach in a juvenile prison and it is shocking the number of student that I have had that have been out of school for years.
I think a good middle ground needs to be found. Writing papers and reading are essential tools that I believe are needed for the future, but you are right. We also need a lot more, so that children can be educated much further, and prepared for the future. It is important to have them develop in much more aspects, including social ones. The real world seems to be very different from the worlds that students grow up in. I also think that although there might be a lot of mundane tasks, reading and writing are not the only things found in any school as you say. We simply need to find a way to make all kids interested in learning all subjects in some way. If it is fun, they might be less likely to drop out.
I am currently a biological education major at Illinois State University and I agree that a technology enriched education is extremely important for our youth. I grew up never using a computer until I was almost in high school, and only recently have I begun to understand how it works. I believe that computer skills should be taught early on in a child’s education. In doing so a student can build on their knowledge of technology throughout their education and ensure that they will be able to survive in the career world tomorrow. The drop rate increasing drastically in some areas is depressing, but this is yet another reason to enhance and start our technology education early on. First off, those who do leave the education system prematurely will have some basic knowledge on how to use the technology available to them in the future. Second, children nowadays learn to play video games very early on. This means that they are capable and obviously interested in technology. Thirdly, a hurdle that must be overcome by every teacher is keeping their classroom interesting and their students thirsty for knowledge. This can be remedied by incorporating innovative and challenging programs into their classroom. The challenge here is not how we will get students to be interested, but rather if the education system and its members will be willing to try it.