Asked to consider the factors that determine the influence of working part time on graduation
Nearly half (47 percent) said they left because "classes were not interesting."
Nearly seven in ten -- 69 percent -- said they were "not motivated" or "inspired to work hard," even though two-thirds said they would've worked harder if more was demanded of them.
I remember a photograph I saw years ago in a National Geographic magazine. It was taken in a New York City ghetto: a mother and her 10-year-old son in a tiny apartment bedroom. They sat close to each other, on the edge of a single bed. Taken from above, a mother held her arm out, showing her son the needle “tracks” that covered it. She was just home from detox, telling her son that he should never put drugs into his body because they were bad for him. Growing up surrounded by drug traffickers and junkies, this boy had been hired by the neighborhood grocer to sweep out the store after school every day. The grocer couldn’t pay much, but he encouraged the boy to do his homework, finish school and go on to college. From somewhere, this young boy had found the inner drive to reject the quick money he could have earned as a runner for drug sellers. He wanted to become a doctor so that he could help people who were sick like his mother. Although young Oren Etzioni wasn’t raised in Hell’s Kitchen, he demonstrated an equal, innate sense of what was right. Refusing to steal from his employer, Oren exemplifies the inner desire to do what is right that this 10 year old child exhibited. A Etzioni, in his essay “Working at McDonald’s,” offers the example of his son’s experience as a reason why high school students should not work part time jobs. (Etzioni 296)
Etzioni has decided that teenagers drop out of school because they work part-time fast-food jobs. His essay, while logical on the surface, tries to convince his reader that they need to keep their high school students who work part time at fast food establishments because they have an increased dropout rate, are thrust into a limbo-esque environment where "all too often delinquent teen values dominate," (296) and become enamored with "objects of no intrinsic educational, cultural or social merit." (296)
3
in discussing this third concern appears, Etzioni adopts an obviously sarcastic mode: "this is only fair and square; they are being fed American consumers and spend their money on what turns them on." (296) The reader is to instinctively fall in with those educators who bemoan the fate of these ignorant, "young, yet uninformed individuals, . . . [who] learned so quickly the dubious merit of keeping up with the Joneses in ever-changing fads, promoted by mass merchandising." (296). He dismisses, almost automatically, those "among the poor" who use this part-time job income to "support themselves"-- and those middle-class students, who "set some money aside to help pay for college." (296)
s about teenagers who work part-time jobs, while they were in high school. Is that they may have an increased chance of dropping out. The reasons that he gives for this is that these jobs, while inappropriate for college-bound, upwardly mobile teams, are ideal for lower class, minority youngsters.
The reasons that students drop out are varied: none reported by The Silent Epidemic include part-time work. Some who dropped out said that classes weren’t interesting. Others missed too much school and couldn’t catch up. Some reported that they had too much freedom at home—not enough rules, not enough demanded by teachers or expected of them by their parents. Feeling unmotivated, 70% of these students who dropped out, felt that they could have graduated “if they had tried.” (Bridgeland)
A 2006 survey, The Silent Epidemic, put these questions to a group that isn’t usually asked for opinions on American education—high school dropouts. The study found that while some students drop out because of significant academic challenges, most dropouts are students who could have, and believe they could have, succeeded in school. The study sheds light on a number of important questions, including:
Etzioni does hit on one factor leading to high school drop out: “For almost all young people, dropping out of high school is not a sudden act, but a gradual process of disengagement.” (Bridgeland) The reasons why students drop out are as varied and complex as the students themselves: essentially, though, it comes down to the child’s inability to see beyond the “here and now” of her own situation.
For this reason, working a part time job is actually an opportunity for high school aged children to begin to comprehend a wide world that they have never before been able to imagine. The monotony of the Burger King assembly line, rather than enslaving the worker, provides the opportunity for a student to learn that in order to reach certain goal, specific steps must always be taken. Outside of their family, outside of their circle of friends, outside of the classroom, outside their community a teenager’s influence on others and ability to excel personally, will depend upon her ability to learn that every desired end follows from a prescribed process. Remembering to make fresh coffee every eight minutes, to press certain buttons on the register that allow the business to track its income, and the sheer will necessary for everyone at some point to "have the gumption" (Etzioni 294) to be where you need to be—even when you don't want to be there—is an opportunity to begin the process of maturing into a responsible adult. Even the most inventive, delicate craftwork that men and women can undertake, violin making, drawing architectural plans, fashioning a new polymer for industrial use, constructing the micro-sized motor that can power an artificial heart—all of these endeavors require constant, repeated, monotonous, continual, repeated practice. A gourmet chocolatier, book editor, engine mechanic, legal assistant, genetic physicist, English composition teacher, linguistic analyst, veterinarian’s assistant, hospital admitting clerk, or fine artist who paints in oils: all must repeat, again and again, the steps necessary for them to complete their job.
Students who drop out ultimately do come to understand the importance of a high school graduation diploma. As adults, the overwhelming majority of drop outs said that “finishing
high school was important to success in life. Three-fourths (74 percent) said that if they were able to relive the experience, they would
have stayed in school.” (Bridgeland)
Teenagers limited by poverty-level living conditions and the absence of positive parental support are the dropouts stuck in Etzioni's low-paying, routinized, dead-end jobs. These jobs, however, are not the reason why these students give up high school. A 2006 survey of high school dropouts from across the nation, revealed that only 32% of all those who dropped out did so because they need to get a job to support themselves. of these dropouts were young women who had become pregnant and needed to support themselves. They did not stop attending school. So that they could earn extra spending money every week to buy new clothes, they dropped out of high school, because they needed to become full-time wage earners.
dropout. The stereotype suggested that what separated dropouts from graduates were character flaws - personal traits of someone who could not adjust to high school and who was too ignorant to understand the consequences of leaving school.
Poverty still makes a difference in who graduates. That - not the absolute number of graduates or dropouts - is the real dropout problem. Dropouts: Shadow of high school graduation
Copyright © 1997-2004, Sherman Dorn
http://www.coedu.usf.edu/~dorn/research/dropouts/shadow.html
What Dropouts Believe Would Improve Students’ Chances
Opportunities for real-world learning
(internships, service learning, etc.) to
make classroom more relevant
Better teachers who keep
classes interesting
Smaller classes with more
individual instruction
Better communication between parents
& school, get parents more involved
Parents make sure their
kids go to school every day
Increase supervision at school:
ensure students attend classes
This would improve students’ chances of staying in school
81%
75%
71%
71%
70%
Top Five Reasons Dropouts Identify as Major
Factors For Leaving School
Classes were
not interesting
Missed too many days
and could not catch up
Spent time with people
who were not interested
in school
Had too much freedom
and not enough rules in my life
Was failing
in school
47%
43%
42%
38%
Bridgeland, John M., John J. DiIulio, Jr., Karen Burke Morison. “The Silent Epidemic: Perspectives of High School Dropouts.” Peter D. Hart Research Associates for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. March 2006. Web. 12 June 2009. http://www.gatesfoundation.org/united-states/Documents/TheSilentEpidemic3-06FINAL.pdf
35%
The Silent Epidemic
Perspectives of High School Dropouts
A report by Civic Enterprises in association with
Peter D. Hart Research Associates
for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
By: John M. Bridgeland
John J. DiIulio, Jr.
Karen Burke Morison
March 2006 http://www.gatesfoundation.org/united-states/Documents/TheSilentEpidemic3-06FINAL.pdf
What might have kept dropouts in school?
- 81 percent called for more "real-world" learning opportunities.
- 75 percent wanted smaller classes with more individual instruction.
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