ABC recognizes the epidemic proportions of the high school dropout rate. Like any good article on the subject, the author reminds us that high school dropouts tend to have lower incomes, are more likely to be criminals, and have shorter life spans.
I suppose that the answer is to give every young man and woman a high school diploma upon his or her eighteenth birthday. That way, they would all instantly earn more money, follow the law, and live another decade longer than they would have.
It might not have ever occurred to ABC News that the tendency to jettison formal education should be analyzed on the same level as poverty, crime and shorter life spans, all as symptoms of a more fundamental cause.
For The Crown Rights has a good synopsis of the issue. I especially agree with #2 of his three-point list, and his racialist reasoning. With that having been said, some dropouts aren’t dropping out because they’re too dumb, they’re leaving because they’re smart and therefore bored. Therefore, that which was supposed to decrease the dropout rate, dumbing down and politically cleansing the cirriculum, might have the ironic effect of increasing it.
