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What pushes a teenager to suddenly drop out of high school? The answer: any number of very stressful "trigger" events that occur in their final few months in class, researchers at Université de Montréal's Public Health Research Institute have found.
In fact, adolescents exposed to severe stressors are more than twice as likely to drop out in the following few months compared to similar schoolmates who are not exposed, says the study led by UdeM pyschoeducation professor Véronique Dupéré.
The stressors are not always school-related. In fact, most occur away from school and can involve family members (divorcing parents, for example), conflicts with peers, work issues (being laid off), health issues (a car accident) and legal issues.
[...] "These findings show that the risk of high school dropout is not predetermined over the long run," Dupéré said. "Rather, it fluctuates and becomes higher when adolescents have to deal with challenging situations in their lives. School personnel thus need to be aware of their students' changing needs in and out of school to provide them with the right kind of support at the right time."
What has been your experience?
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170410123935.htm
[Source]: What triggers a high-school student to suddenly drop out?
[Abstract]: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cdev.12792/abstract
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @06:09AM (6 children)
I read this ^^^ and it makes me sad, and very thankful I was schooled in an earlier time and in the middle of nowheresville, where no-one gave much of a hoot toward "teaching the test.".
I can definitely sense your frustration. You aren't ( by far ) the first young person who has told me this tale of woe. I was talking to a neighbor kid just a couple of days ago who told me the same thing. He has not dropped out, but he tells me how frustrated he gets waiting to be let out of the place. About being taught obedience, not self reliance. Consumption, not production. How to be a good, obedient idiot servant to the owning class. Obedience to law that does not serve them like it serves someone else.
When I was a kid, we had the spectre of mutual nuclear annihilation looming over our heads... and I don't consider either myself or any of my classmates all that dumb. We were very interested in how to maintain what we had. In my case, I was sufficiently motivated to go into Electrical Engineering. I wanted to know how everything around me worked. I could have cared less about stuff like fashions, and most of the "general ed" classes. Not that I thought they were stupid - they just weren't for me. I could not imagine a more time-wasting thing than reading Charles Dickens or William Shakespeare. That kinda stuff went through me like feeding COBOL to a FORTRAN compiler.
Now, remember, WWII wasn't all that long ago, and the USA was still trying to catch up to a lot of fine German engineering. The British also had some fine engineering. And we had the Soviet Threat about Cuba. The rich people had good reason to encourage us kids to become productive, else the big bad russkies might lob a few nukes into Washington and declare that the ones who owned everything no longer owned anything, and they would have to work like anyone else if they expected to be fed.
However, with globalization being what it is, and the USA having the ability to print up the world's currency, we now have the world's biggest baddest guns, and it makes little difference to the global elite which continent supports their lifestyle, if they own them all. No one can threaten their stuff now, but all the little people... which seems why the three letter agencies are so determined to keep tabs on everyone, so any dissenter can have a lot of problems thrown their way - so they won't have time to stir the pot.
So, it appears to me the elite are deliberately "dumbing down" the education of our younger folk, waiting for us older folk to die out. We don't want kids who actually know how their computer works, so we pass all sorts of "intellectual property" law and enforce "digital locks" placed on that understanding. We want them to consume, and kiss ass in order to maintain their social standing. Buy in Large!. Nation of shop-keepers and bankers. When I was a kid, we had a "draft" for compulsory military service, demanding our lives if it came to that, to protect the assets of the elite, yet we are denied things as simple as sharing music? And kept ignorant by use of copyright laws? We will sacrifice the robustness of our whole computational infrastructure because we don't want anyone but some elite knowing where the backdoors are? Yet we are expected to use these machines to make purchases or file taxes?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @07:53AM (4 children)
who were overprotective and told me I could do stuff when I was an adult.
As a result I am now about 15 years into being an adult and only now catching up on a lot of stuff they at least had the opportunity, if not motivation to be involved in at much younger ages.
My kids are definitely not growing up the same place I did, and are probably going to get far more opportunities to learn via the school of hard knocks than I did as a kid, hopefully somewhere with kids too busy to spend time on pecking order. (The ones who weren't big on it when I was a kid were also working family businesses or from inclusive, rather than exclusive households/social circles. Not many of either left nowadays though!)
(Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Wednesday April 12 2017, @08:44AM (3 children)
*That* was what our ultimate goal was. Have our own business. Do something useful. Have people come to us with their problem, and we be able to fix it for them.
Then use the money so earned to pay others to things for us that aren't in our specialty.
However, ever increasing tax burden and regulation is making currency a lossy transport mechanism... as every stage of currency transfer will involve losses of both your capital and your time to keep all the tax reporting accurate.
It starts becoming more important to conserve one's currency and do things themselves that they would have formerly hired out.
While the government increasingly taxes any still running enterprise harder and harder to meet ever increasing welfare payment needs for the unemployed.
At the time I was a kid, a lot of aspired to own service businesses: auto mechanics - refrigeration - electronic repair - farm stuff service.
Gee, these days, it takes at least one full-time guy just to interface to the government to get the necessary permissions to earn a living. That does not bode well for the economies of scale when each small business has to spend such a large fraction of their resources pacifying government entities whose permission must be obtained before any customers can be served.
Now, it all seems to be selling stuff at the mall, or asking everyone if they want fries, while the people who have assets don't invest them in jobs, rather its buying up houses and collecting rents.
Personally, I blame all this sorry economy on poorly written tax law that encourages greed and discourages job creation, by making rent-seeking more profitable than building or doing things.
To me, its just a matter of time before the government cannot balance their books keeping up the welfare systems that support the people that small businesses would have been hiring. Then the pitchforks come out, titles of ownership get burned, and the system resets.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday April 12 2017, @02:25PM (2 children)
its just a matter of time before the government cannot balance their books
Almost like the soviet in the 1985-1989 period..
increasing tax burden and regulation is making currency a lossy transport mechanism... as every stage of currency transfer will involve losses of both your capital and your time to keep all the tax reporting accurate.
Perhaps informal trading currencies will gain ground?
(Score: 1) by anubi on Friday April 14 2017, @09:34AM (1 child)
I keep thinking that, too, but the fly in the ointment is that not only is the USA dollar the world's reserve currency, we also have the biggest guns, so that we don't have to be fiscally responsible to the extent we impose it on others. We can't pay for our guns? We just "extend the debt ceiling"; done!
Anyone have a problem with that? Want to be "sanctioned"? Here, play nice and go along with us and we will leave you alone.
Its been known since before Biblical times that something we call "money" is required for trading - as very few people want the specific thing a specific other has for trade. However, our currency is being shanghaied for the benefit of a few. No matter which countries' currency we trade in, its all the same. Gold has its own set of problems for use as a trading unit of wealth. So does bitcoin. The dollar seems the least risky of them all, but through "fractional reserve banking" and usury, we have legalized printing currency in lieu of earning it - which allows the people in position to print themselves into wealth to do exactly that.
My primary irritation is not the bankers per se, but my own congressional representatives who passed law enabling them to screw the public as they do. I believe we should have never had a "central bank" with the immense profits now seen by the banking industry should have been going to the government - in lieu of taxes. And the duty of the government should have been injecting this money growth into the economy by creation of jobs creating/maintaining public infrastructure. But instead, we privatized the profits in the hands of a very few international bankers, and socialized the losses in the form of immense taxation.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday April 14 2017, @03:45PM
Anyone have a problem with that? Want to be "sanctioned"? Here, play nice and go along with us and we will leave you alone.
The problem is that if the economy lack internal consistency it risk a uncontrollable collapse. Just as a nuclear power plant can control the power source. But if it is toyed with, it can and will blow operators ass clean of.
However, our currency is being shanghaied for the benefit of a few. No matter which countries' currency we trade in, its all the same.
I think the point is to use currencies that are harder to manipulate and track. Can't print new nor see who to steal (tax) from.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday April 12 2017, @09:47PM
So, it appears to me the elite are deliberately "dumbing down" the education of our younger folk, waiting for us older folk to die out.
See also the intentional demographic replacement program.