>Eric Bohlman said, "I'm pretty sure the average high school dropout rate
>is more like 10% than 25%."
>
>The National Education Goals Report, 1995, p 32 says that 80% of 18-24
>year olds have a high school diploma, and another 6% have an equivalency.
>The percentages are unchanged since 1990.
>
> Rol Fessenden
> LL Bean
Eric and Rol,
This is very interesting with the various figures being given for the
number of black children who get into scrapes with the law (one out of
three) and the number of out of wedlock girls as a % of the whole of the
population.
Does this mean some teachers are going out, working extra hours for no pay
and pulling these children out of jail and encouraging the pregnant girls
to come to school anyway? Will these people have to "go to work" now or
can they stay in school? Sounds just like the way it was 45 years ago in
the Indian ghettos. If you're going to do it you have to care enough to
fight Fafner the Dragon, because there are not going to be three big women
flying out of the sky, from the Queen of the Night, to rescue you. What
ever happened to those three women and that man who caught birds? Maybe
somebody is lying about the stats. I wonder who? I guess it depends upon
what you want.
I was talking to a public school teacher the other day who graduated from
Harvard in physics. He said that the real problem began when the teachers
began to think of themselves as business people. Then the problem came up
about whether it was cost effective for them to put in all of those extra
hours and spend their own money for those student materials and take that
food out of the mouths of their own kids, even though the school wouldn't
provide them. If the students were customers then the teachers had to
evaluate each student and see if they were cost effective. If training a
student who was spoiled or devious became too time consuming they had,
like good business, to be willing to downsize the unprofitable elements of
their business and let the students with poor discipline or attitude go.
No matter how much potential there was, they had to decide that since it
wouldn't be profitable to pour good energy down a hole that the payback
was in their humble opinion, unclear to nil. They would just do the
teacher version of "downsizing" and focus on the ones who were easier, had
good attitude were self motivated and willing to show the teacher's
product to the best advantage to the "Judges." "God just makes some
people to win and some to lose." It's not cost effective to waste time.
My friend's comment was that they were Venal people and he went on doing
what he did, which was to help students because he was their teacher not
their servant. Henry Ford said we were all put here to learn, then he
justified his mind dumbing assembly lines with the words "some people have
to work through their destiny (and find meaning in being the breeding
class REH) before they can go on to higher things." Henry Ford believed
in reincarnation! (like Shirley MacLain) Didn't F. Scott Fitzgerald write
a book about this 60 years ago?
-- Ray Evans Harrell mcore@soho.ios.com
-- mcore@soho.ios.com (Ray Evans Harrell)