The Right Stuff
Dear Doctor,
We have a young man in our house, and he wants to drop out of school.
He is a junior in high school, and he hates every day of it. We are doing every thing we can to keep him going. He is a great kid.
Everyone loves him. He is no trouble except at school where he doesn’t get work done and makes the teacher’s unhappy. Have you any advice for us or him?
Discouraged
Dear Discouraged,
The real question is not high school but your son. If he is made of the right stuff, he will be all right.
A high school is a bridge, but there are many other roads and bridges. Your son may take the GED exam for an equivalency certificate.
Then, he may go on to college and proceed at his own pace and in a field he enjoys and loves. He may love working with his hands and find a new field where he may earn a living and find the joy of being productive.
Unfortunately, high schools, in my opinion have not grown and developed as viable and contributing institutions. The world has changed. Childhood and youth are not the same, but the curriculum is relatively unchanged.
Four tired years of math, science, English, and social studies continue to be the order of the day. All are essential subjects, but the pace and design is terminally boring. I see so many young people like your son.
They are burned out, bored, and usua lly bright. School is hazardous to their health. As an answer to their plight, we have invented MCAS, a plague on education, and "no child left behind", perhaps better called, as former Gov. Ann Richards of Texas opined, "No child’s behind is left’" May I quote William Ayers’ distinction between education and schooling.
He said that Education is about opening doors, opening minds, opening possibilities. School is too often about sorting and punishing, grading and ranking and certifying. Education is unconditional — it asks nothing in return. School routinely demands obedience and conformity as a precondition to attendance.
Education is surprising and unruly, while the first and fundamental law of school is to follow orders. Education frees the mind, while schooling bureaucratizes the brain.
An educator unleashes the unpredictable, while a schoolteacher sometimes starts with an unhealthy obsession with a commitment to classroom management and linear lesson plans.
Tags: high school drop out, high school woes, our son wants to drop out of high school
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