So you dropped out because? - 10.04.2006.1

I was speaking with my best friend and we were discussing the fact that the dropout rate is currently in the realm of 50-70%. In discussing this we were both enraged at the complaints we’ve heard from some young African American students. Comments have been that school is too hard, or unfair, or that it’s not worth it. How such statements could be made verges on the incredulous. And it is insulting to those who have come before these students.

The current generation of kids in high school have the easiest time ever. There is just no excuse. While there is some risk lately from deranged individuals on a rampage, the same could be said of working in the post office in the 1990’s. Considering the number of schools in the nation, and the number of events, the risk is negligible and thankfully precautions do exist in many places to help minimize that risk further.

Taking out the random effect of a couple of sick people, what other excuse is there? Back in the 1980’s, in New York City – the Bronx in particular, several schools were teaching classes with books that were older than the students. I’ve mentioned how I had classes with books 3 years older than I was at the time, and this was in the advanced college bound classes. In the 1970’s and 80’s there were several instances of race riots between high schools based solely on race. In the 1960’s and 70’s there were frequent multiple instances of beatings and attacks motivated by race alone.

Inner city schools had worse conditions in virtually every aspect. And yes there were gangs. This is not a new thing, whether you are speaking of the Bald Meanies or Zulu Nation and the 5 percenters. I recall the chains and knives that were part of school in my day (Does that make me sound old? It was only 20+ years ago). Older burnt out teachers, suffering from little pay and class sizes of 40+ students for decades were also not a sudden new creation of the current decade.

There were drugs of course. Not the crack, addicted and ruined for life in one hit, kind of drugs but the up for 3 days, lucy in the sky with diamonds, nodding off wherever you may be kind of drugs. A bit more expensive but they did the trick well enough to screw up a decent portion of the generation. And easily the cause of the death of around a third of the friends I grew up with, whether from dealing or taking. I mean making it to 25 has always been a challenge, though the further back you go the more likely it was to be because of a lynching, or other racially motivated action. If you think the plunger abuses of the last decade was bad, you don’t want to think about the police dogs, fire hoses and more that were done by the authorities with impunity on a daily basis.

So when kids say that school is too hard, I don’t know if I should laugh or smack them upside their heads. It’s not like we had computers that could make ENIAC look like Pong, or the internet to look up even the most obscure historical, mathematical or scientific facts. The only channel of discovery I recall was going to the library and picking up a book (not an eBook, or audio book, or a downloadable .pdf).

The complaints today, and the surge in dropouts is sad, stupid and painful. It’s taking all the strides and efforts, made by Dr. Martin Luther King, Mr. Malcolm X, and the various men and women that were beaten or killed, and throwing it into the sewer. There is virtually nothing that a kid in school encounters now, that was not more difficult 20, 30 or more years ago. So I can’t understand what in the world they are talking about. As I mentioned, there is no excuse. I’m reminded of an old television commercial (back when there were only 3 networks and cable was what you used to tie things) by the NAACP, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”

This is what I think, what do you think?