Staggering high school drop out rate

Discussion Open Forum
41

[quote]where high-school-drop-out dad might be making $200,000 or more a year (US and Canadian dollars are about at par right now) in the oil field.
There are waitresses - waitresses, not hookers or strippers - who are making $300,000 a year in Calgary. If the economy turns, these kinds of incomes aren’t going to be available, so maybe young people aren’t wrong to think they should start working and raking in the cash right away, while they still can.[/quote]

My good buddy left Taiwan 3 months ago for the oil fields in Alberta and is now back in Ontario. Said it wasn’t what it was cracked up to be, so these figures are high. As far as servers making $300 000, I doubt it. The oil fields will be there in a few years, why not at least finish high school first? The focus should be on education in the teenage years, it’s not like these kids see this opportunity as an investment in their future, just see instant gratification and all the useless shit they can buy. Don’t you think most people that don’t finish school regret it? Someone mentioned these kids going on to open businesses, I really don’t think the oil fields are producing the next generation of entrepreneurs.

42

So let em make some cash while they can.
If they are making 20 - 30 an hour, they can afford a good education later. I've met a lot of window washers and bartenders with college degrees. (Art History, Sociology, Philosophy to name a few.) Unlike Taiwan, a generic degree isn't a ticket to 600 NT an hour.

43

If I could do it again I would of gone to a trade school and learned a trade.

Then again I did have a good time going to college in Santa Barbara… :slight_smile:

44

[quote=“Durins Bane”]If I could do it again I would of gone to a trade school and learned a trade. [/quote]Me too. Certainly would have been a better use of my first four years after high school. If I had to do high school again, and if my high school had a decent trades program (instead of a free-for-all jungle), I would do it then rather than maxing out on academic subjects I was always too bored by to study for. School had a decent arts program… I just wasn’t wise enough to take advantage. Youth is wasted on those with no experience.

45

My dad left high school when he was 15 years old to work in the Texas oil fields, making good money. He did that for four years before he got his GED (equivalent to a high school diploma) and joined the military. Years later when he and my mom met and got married, he went to work in the oil fields again. He was still in his 20s, but knew that he had to do something else in life because the work was just too physically punishing and dangerous (hence the high pay). So he saved up a big pot of money, which combined with his GI benefits and my mom’s moderate salary was enough for him to go to university full time and get his BA.

But it seems that most posters are missing Jaboney’s point. He isn’t arguing that everyone should finish high school and get a liberal arts degree. He’s saying that high school should offer sufficient value to potential dropouts so that they’ll be incentivized to stay in school and learn a trade before entering the workforce. I vaguely recall from a comparative politics course that some countries (Germany?) have programs like that, such that by the time a student is 15 or 16 he’ll either be on a university route or learning a trade. Two years of training in welding or electronics would help those kids earn even more money in the oil fields than they’ll get doing hard labor, and will let them take their skills elsewhere if the oil trade falls.

46

I doubt unskilled workers in the oil fields make anywhere near that much. I know a guy who worked on a oil rig out of high school with no skills who made $1100 (USD) a week, which yearly comes out to $57,200. Really good money for a labor job, but not anywhere close to $200k. By the way he collapsed on the rig and had to be medicaved off. It can be very dangerous work.

Err…doubtful.

47

Your points are good Gao, but I think the problem is overstated because in Canada it is very easy to drop back into the system.

Because of health issues I had to drop out of school at 16 for a semester and graduated later with one course short of a full program (and so didn’t really graduate). However, I wanted to travel so I worked for a year, then backpacked for a year (almost coming to Taiwan way back in 1987).

Anyway, when I went to college I had to simultaneously finish Algebra 12. No problem. I’m good at math and aced the course and was able to transfer to a university after the first year.

If the system was rigid I would be concerned. But I don’t think it is. I would prefer kids finish high school and get some training but in a booming economy it doesn’t bother me much that some are going for the money. My brother was like this. He graduated high school in 1976 and worked a number of high paying working class jobs for four years before returning to uni. He’s now a law scholl graduate and a top policy advisor for the federal government.

48

Gao Bohan, thank you: you got it.

Now, I’ve got to get offline: again I’m channeling unread articles. Yeah, yeah… ‘fooled by randomness’, but it’s still weird.

[quote=“NYT: David Brooks”]Why did the United States become the leading economic power of the 20th century? The best short answer is that a ferocious belief that people have the power to transform their own lives gave Americans an unparalleled commitment to education, hard work and economic freedom.

Between 1870 and 1950, the average American’s level of education rose by 0.8 years per decade. In 1890, the average adult had completed about 8 years of schooling. By 1900, the average American had 8.8 years. By 1910, it was 9.6 years, and by 1960, it was nearly 14 years.

As Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz describe in their book, “The Race Between Education and Technology,” America’s educational progress was amazingly steady over those decades, and the U.S. opened up a gigantic global lead. Educational levels were rising across the industrialized world, but the U.S. had at least a 35-year advantage on most of Europe. In 1950, no European country enrolled 30 percent of its older teens in full-time secondary school. In the U.S., 70 percent of older teens were in school.

America’s edge boosted productivity and growth. But the happy era ended around 1970 when America’s educational progress slowed to a crawl. Between 1975 and 1990, educational attainments stagnated completely. Since then, progress has been modest. America’s lead over its economic rivals has been entirely forfeited, with many nations surging ahead in school attainment.

This threatens the country’s long-term prospects. It also widens the gap between rich and poor. Goldin and Katz describe a race between technology and education. The pace of technological change has been surprisingly steady. In periods when educational progress outpaces this change, inequality narrows. The market is flooded with skilled workers, so their wages rise modestly. In periods, like the current one, when educational progress lags behind technological change, inequality widens. The relatively few skilled workers command higher prices, while the many unskilled ones have little bargaining power.
[…]
America rose because it got more out of its own people than other nations. That stopped in 1970…[/quote]

49

I’ve mentioned in a previous message that I would encourge anyone to finish high school. Staying a year or two longer in school will lay a foundation for critical thinking that can last a lifetime. That being said, I don’t think one should equate high school or university graduation as being absolutely necessary for success in life or indicitive of smartness or superiority in any way. There are lots of innovative and hardworking entrepreneurs who never finished high school and went on to establish numerous succcessful businesses. My grandfather was one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. Knew more about history and travelled to more countries than most professionals I’ve met. Worked as a bricklayer his whole life and never graduated from high school.

If people decide to leave school and do so to enter the workforce, I’m not too worried about them. It’s the ones that leave high school to engage in self-destrutive behaviour that I worry about. If a high school dropout is working full time, paying taxes, supporting his/her family, and learning new skills, then I can’t judge them. There are plenty of uni grads who don’t work as hard as they could because they think certain types of work are beneath them. Anyone who puts in an honest days work deserves praise.

50

I think in this particular example, the drop-outs are looking at it as a one-time opportunity. I’d say the current boom in Alberta and Saskatchewan is more like the Klondike Gold Rush than just typical economic development. The same kinds of opportunities may well not be there in a few years.
I think you can see evidence of that already - people going to Alberta now sometimes find that “it’s not all that it’s cracked up to be” - i.e., they got in late.

51

I doubt unskilled workers in the oil fields make anywhere near that much. I know a guy who worked on a oil rig out of high school with no skills who made $1100 (USD) a week, which yearly comes out to $57,200. Really good money for a labor job, but not anywhere close to $200k. By the way he collapsed on the rig and had to be medicaved off. It can be very dangerous work.

Err…doubtful.[/quote]

Yeah, that’s just what they tell their parents.

52

I wonder how all those high school drop-outs are doing now.

[quote=“Globe and Mail”]Alberta expects to post a $4.7-billion deficit this year – the largest in provincial history – as the former darling of the Canadian economy sinks into the red over four consecutive years.

The resource-rich province has been brought to its knees by collapsing energy prices, a slumping stock market and declining corporate investment.
[…]
Alberta is in its worst fiscal position since 1986, when energy prices crashed and the Progressive Conservative government of the day was faced with deficits and a debt that ballooned to over $23-billion.

It took 19 years for the right-wing government to completely dig itself out of that fiscal mess.

The province now expects to accumulate deficits of $10.3-billion over four years.

Opposition parties and some economists have long accused the Tories, who have reigned over cycles of booms and busts since taking power in 1971, of mismanaging the province’s vast oil and gas wealth by tying government books too closely to volatile energy prices.

Now, the province is bracing for non-renewable resource revenue to slide by 52 per cent to $5.9-billion this year, making it one of the largest drops on record. About one-third of last year’s budget was paid for using energy revenues. That number is expected to plummet to 19 per cent this year.

The debt-free province is already on track to post a $1.4-billion deficit for the 2008-09 fiscal year.

It’s a dramatic downturn in fortunes from the height of the recent boom in 2005-2006 when the province raked in a record $14.8-billion from energy revenue.[/quote]

With the Harper gov’t on the ropes, energy prices in the tank and the last scary spike still pushing investment in greener energy, Alberta’s in for a rough ride. I wonder if the gov’t will invest in adult basic education for all those drop-outs, or revert to form and simply hand them bus tickets to Vancouver.

53

I don’t have a diploma to my name and I’m not exactly living out of a trailer.

Proud to be a high school dropout :discodance:

54

And you’re not representative of most drop-outs.

One guy winning the lotto doesn’t make buying tickets a good bet for the rest.

55

If an objective were to keep kids in school, there would need to be appropriate measures/channels/streams put in place such that the kids who wanted to learn academic things weren’t stuck with a bunch of idiots clowning around in their classes. That was one of the things that drove me out of education in the West.

Many years ago, there were tech schools in Australia. However, they were closed down. I believe, though I can’t confirm, that this was in part because there was a stigma attached to being a tradesman back then, and every parent believed his or her little Johnny was actually of rocket scientist potential, and therefore thought it was disciminatory for little Johnny to be shuffled off to tech school.

:roflmao: You obviously haven’t taught in the Victorian education system!

56

Bloody hell, not in Britain!