by Mark Rhoads
If you are shopping for Christmas gifts and are planning to buy a toy for child over the age of nine, please think twice and ask yourself if that toy that will break in a month is a better gift that shows your love than a book or CD that could fire the imagination of a young mind. For a variety of reasons, transient political successes that conservatives enjoyed in the 1980s and again from 1994 to 2005 might have served to distract us from core long-term missions that are so important for America's future. There is no mssion more important than radically rebuilding static primary and secondary education systems that have failed our kids so miserably in recent decades. It also is a mission that could attract some liberals or progressives who share our concerns to a common cause.
The situation is grim. More than a million high school students drop out of school before graduation every year in America--almost one-third of students in that age group or one every 26 seconds. Year after year for a decade, Black and Hispanic students in Illinois drop out at a rate thirty points higher than white students. All the baloney about reform tossed around by the so-called Annenberg Challenge and other phony "education reform" groups who are terrified of teacher unions has done nothing to slow the drop out rate among minority students. Neither civic or business leaders nor minority leaders in the Illinois legislature or in Chicago city government have done anything effective to address this long-term problem except to bemoan the numbers.
When governments or school boards fail to act, it is even more important that individuals try on their own or in small clubs to do anything they can. Thirteen years ago Hugh O'Connor, the son of the late actor Carol O'Connor, shot himself to death at the age of 33. He had depended on different drugs since he was 16. A grief-stricken Carol O'Connor made a very emotional public service announcement for TV that had a tag line, "get between your child and drugs any way you can." Public schools are not pushing drugs but they are not teaching our kids either. The analogy to Carol O'Connor is to get involved in the education of your children any way that you can, even home schooling if you are able.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates said a few years ago that U.S. high schools are "obsolete." “When I compare our high schools with what I see when I’m traveling abroad, I am terrified for our work force of tomorrow." Gates said. Unfortunately Gates looks at the problem in terms of a "work force" issue when it is really so much more profound when you consider how drop outs condemn themselves to a permanent sub-strata of American society.
Gates continued: “By obsolete, I don’t just mean that they are broken, flawed or underfunded, though a case could be made for every one of those points. By obsolete, I mean our high schools — even when they’re working as designed — cannot teach all our students what they need to know today.”
Gates did not add this but he could have. If students are not in school for their junior or senior year there is virtually no chance they can get a basic education at all even if they could get a poor one by staying in school.
Both conservatives and liberals who really care about this issue need to keep hammering year in and year out about ways to slow the drop out rate. If the new president was elected in part to be a role model and knock the props out from excuses for not staying in school, let's hope to see that result work very fast. But it will take more than one role model, it will take dozens to change the culture so that kids at age 16 do not think it is cool to drop out or not hip to stay to graduation.
The message to both liberals and conservatives is to scream and raise the roof until some policy change helps to mend the problem. All of our kids, those who stay in school and those who don't are being cheated to different degrees. But the kids who drop out get the worst of the bargain. Give a kid, any kid, a book they can read. Dedicate the book on the inside cover to them in your handwriting and tell them why you chose that particular book for them. Make it a good book such as a biography or some inspiring story about how someone overcame adversity to win against the odds. If the kids read just one or two chapters that might be just enough to inspire them to change their own attitude toward learning and to understand that reading is cool. Buying a book instead of a toy is a small thing but it does more to show your genuine love for a child than a toy ever can.
