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Education in Crisis; The High Cost of High School Dropouts, Part 1
Does anyone see the relationships between?
- Poor parenting skills and high school dropouts?
- Dysfunctional schools, teaching skills, and high school dropouts?
- Teacher unions, their teachers, and a deteriorating educational system?
- Budget cuts on the federal, state and local levels, and the increasing dropout rates?
- High school dropouts and their endless cycle of poverty?
- Every American’s stake in ensuring that every child becomes a high school graduate, prepared for success, the modern workplace, and life?
These questions are directly related to the high cost to society when parents fail to parent, teachers fail to teach, unions protect non performing teachers who drive students out of our schools, and Americans fail to see their stake in every child receiving an education that enables them to succeed and contribute.
First, let me begin with a definition of the high cost of school dropouts as Part One of the next series of posts and how they negatively impact local, state, and federal governments, the financial security of our country, and our society in general.
For decades Americans have been warned that U.S. dominance in the world’s economy is fading because of the country’s poor educational performance. Among the largest educational shifts is that educational requirements of the jobs that supported our previous economy are changing. The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that 90% of new high-growth, high-wage jobs will require some post secondary education, in comparison to decades past, when even a high school dropout could find a position in the manufacturing or agricultural sectors that would have supported a family in a middle class lifestyle. Today the many jobs that were held by dropouts or people with high school diplomas are being automated or are going overseas. The minimally educated American will have increasingly diminished options to support themselves or their families.
As I said in an earlier post, more than seven thousand students become dropouts every school day. That adds up to 1.2 million students annually who will not graduate from high school with their peers. This is equal to the entire population of Dallas and San Diego. These individuals are more likely than graduates to spend their lives periodically unemployed, on government assistance, or cycling through our prisons. “Over the next twenty-five years the challenges are unlikely to diminish. The world will continue to change, and good jobs will require even higher levels of education. The retirement of the baby boom generation will create even more demand for new well-educated candidates to replace them in the workforce.” (Alliance for Excellence in Education, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation).
The nation’s secondary schools graduate only 60% of their students (National Education Association). If they graduated all of their students the payoff would be significant. For example, if the students who dropped out of the Class of 2009 had graduated, the nation’s economy would have benefitted from nearly $355 billion in additional income over the course of their lifetimes.
In contrast to those students who drop out, high school graduates live longer, are less likely to be teen parents, and more likely to raise healthier, better educated children. Children from parents without high school degrees are less likely to graduate from high school than children whose parents are graduates. High school graduates are more likely to engage in community activity like voting and volunteering in their communities and at higher levels.
Cecilia Rouse, a professor of public affairs at Princeton University, conducted research in 2005 which shows that each dropout over their lifetime costs the country approximately $260,000 in lost earnings, taxes, and productivity. Unless high schools are able to graduate their students at higher rates, nearly 13 million students will drop out over the next decade. The result will be a loss to the country of $3 trillion.
Think of the impact of high dropout rates on all of us:
High school dropouts influence a community’s economic, social, and civic standing.
- There are significantly lower local, state, and federal tax revenues.
- States find it hard to attract new businesses with a less educated population.
- Crime and incarceration increases.
- A strain on community services and social programs becomes a burden to society.
- The country’s economy and competitive standing suffer in the world.
- Medical facilities and Medicaid are strained beyond capacity.
- Dropouts represent a tremendous loss of human potential and productivity.
- They decrease the country’s ability to compete in an increasing global economy.
Bill Gates has called them “obsolete.” Oprah Winfrey has said that the nation is in a “state of emergency” because of them. Former U.S. Secretary of Education, Ron Paige, has called them an “unrecognized educational crisis.”
These distinguished Americans are discussing America’s high schools.
Part Two of my next Post.
Deferred Gratification – OR- The Marshmellow Test
DEFINITION:
Deferred gratification or delayed gratification is the ability to wait in order to obtain something that one wants. In formal terms, an individual should be able to calculate the net present value of future rewards and defer near-term rewards of lesser value. Animals don’t do this. This challenge is fundamental to human nature.
EXPERIMENT:
In the late nineteen-sixties, Carolyn, a four-year-old with long brown hair, was invited into a “game room” at the Bing Nursery School, on the campus of Stanford University. The room was little more than a large closet, containing a desk and a chair. Carolyn was asked to sit down in the chair and pick a treat from a tray of marshmallows, cookies, and pretzel sticks. Carolyn chose the marshmallow. A researcher then made Carolyn an offer: she could either eat one marshmallow right away or, if she was willing to wait while he stepped out for a few minutes, she could have two marshmallows when he returned. He said that if she rang a bell on the desk while he was away he would come running back, and she could eat one marshmallow but would forfeit the second. Then he left the room.
OBSERVATIONS:
Footage of these experiments, which were conducted over several years, is poignant, as the kids struggle to delay gratification for just a little bit longer. Some cover their eyes with their hands or turn around so they can’t see the tray. Others start kicking the desk, or tug on their pigtails, or stroke the marshmallow as if it were a tiny stuffed animal. Most struggled to resist the treat and held out for an average of less than three minutes. “A few kids ate the marshmallow right away,” Walter Mischel, the Stanford professor of psychology in charge of the experiment, remembers. “They didn’t even bother ringing the bell. Other kids would stare directly at the marshmallow and then ring the bell thirty seconds later.” About thirty per cent of the children successfully delayed gratification until the researcher returned, some fifteen minutes later. These kids wrestled with temptation but found a way to resist.
GOAL OF EXPERIMENT:
The initial goal of the experiment was to identify the mental processes that allowed some people to delay gratification while others simply surrendered and how this influenced behavior. What they discovered is that low delayers, the children who rang the bell quickly, seemed more likely to have behavioral problems, both in school and at home. They got lower S.A.T. scores. They struggled in stressful situations, often had trouble paying attention, and found it difficult to maintain friendships. The child who could wait fifteen minutes had an S.A.T. score that was, on average, two hundred and ten points higher than that of the kid who could wait only thirty seconds.
QUESTION:
Psychologists assumed from their observations that the children’s ability to wait depended on how badly they wanted the marshmallow. But it soon became obvious that every child craved the extra treat. What, then, determined self-control? Mischel’s conclusion, based on hundreds of hours of observation, was that the crucial skill was the “strategic allocation of attention.” Instead of getting obsessed with the marshmallow—the “hot stimulus”—the patient children distracted themselves by covering their eyes, pretending to play hide-and-seek underneath the desk, or singing songs from “Sesame Street.” Their desire wasn’t defeated—it was merely forgotten. “If you’re thinking about the marshmallow and how delicious it is, then you’re going to eat it,” Mischel says. “The key is to avoid thinking about it in the first place.”
CONCLUSIONS:
In adults, this skill is often referred to as metacognition, or thinking about thinking, and it’s what allows people to outsmart their shortcomings. For example, when Odysseus had himself tied to the ship’s mast, he was using some of the skills of metacognition: knowing he wouldn’t be able to resist the Sirens’ song, he made it impossible to give in.
Mischel’s large data set from various studies allowed him to see that children with a more accurate understanding of the workings of self-control were better able to delay gratification. “What’s interesting about four-year-olds is that they’re just figuring out the rules of thinking,” Mischel says. “The kids who couldn’t delay would often have the rules backwards. They would think that the best way to resist the marshmallow is to stare right at it, to keep a close eye on the goal. But that’s a terrible idea. If you do that, you’re going to ring the bell before I leave the room.”
According to Mischel, this view of will power also helps explain why the marshmallow task is such a powerfully predictive test. “If you can deal with hot emotions, then you can study for the S.A.T. instead of watching television,” Mischel says. “And you can save more money for retirement. It’s not just about marshmallows.”
Mischel found a shortcut. When he and his colleagues taught children a simple set of mental tricks—such as pretending that the candy is only a picture, surrounded by an imaginary frame—he dramatically improved their self-control. The kids who hadn’t been able to wait sixty seconds could now wait fifteen minutes. “All I’ve done is give them some tips from their mental user manual,” Mischel says. “Once you realize that will power is just a matter of learning how to control your attention and thoughts, you can really begin to increase it.”
This information was taken from the following site where you can read more: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/18/090518fa_fact_lehrer?printable=true¤tPage=6#ixzz0fXCrbwh9
MY CONCLUSIONS:
Teaching Deferred Gratification to infants and toddlers gives them a promotion into their future. It prepares them for a lifetime of choices that determines their success. We cannot always have what we want when we want it. As Parents we have the advantage of teaching our sons and daughters character, focus, and self determination. If you want to see what happens to our children when we do not parent responsibly, go to your local mall any day after school. Sit down on a bench and observe the “wandering herd”, who all look alike because they lack character and have failed to delay their choices.
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Peek-A-Boo, I See You! Parenting From Your Child's Point of View by Sandra Gunn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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