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: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @04:59AM (14 children)
When there is nothing for you there, for me it was lots of stupid teachers, no resources and no possibility of learning anything of interest, of course I was thrown out for not showing up so I didn't strictly speaking drop out
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @05:03AM (4 children)
OK that and my parents divorce, my fathers stroke, the necessity of protecting my lesbian mother, my uncles attempted molestation, yah I guess there could have been other factors, but the no where to go and no valid reason to be there was A factor
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Wednesday April 12 2017, @05:11AM (3 children)
How about the general lack of sick time? My workplace doesn't ask for a doctor's note, but schools do.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @05:49AM (2 children)
You can expect to need a sick note if your workplace offers sick days and has a significant portion of the employees being lower class.
I don't need a note for my employer, but after 5 days my workplace puts me on short-term disability and MetLife insurance wants a note.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @05:57AM
Productive people aren't trying to squeeze society for its benefits; when a productive person says he's sick, his employer knows it's meaningful (even if that productive person just needs a break and is otherwise perfectly healthy).
The biggest reason to work hard in school and life (and thus be a productive person) is so that you don't have to prejudged to be one of the many low-quality knuckledraggers stinking up this planet; the biggest reason is to enjoy the company and understanding of other productive people.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday April 12 2017, @07:46AM
In UK your workplace can only ask for a sick note after a few days (8 days IIRC).
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @06:00AM (1 child)
When there is nothing for you there, for me it was lots of stupid teachers, no resources and no possibility of learning anything of interest, of course I was thrown out for not showing up so I didn't strictly speaking drop out
In my case, I wasn't thrown out (they tried and failed, crazy != stupid, something they didn't quite understand..), but as I'd mentally 'dropped out' anyway by that point it wouldn't have made much of a difference, but yes, lack of resources and being ineptly spoon-fed stuff that I'd already known for years finally made me 'switch off'.
It's not a good thing to know more about a subject than the person whose job it is to teach you said subject, and it's really not a good thing psychologically to have to then sit through this stuff day in, day out for years... oh, sure, there's always what you do in your own time to counterbalance this, but having to sit there as they try programming you by rote, as dictated by their rigid syllabus, wears you down eventually one way or another.
I'd have to disagree with you slightly regarding the teachers, yes, a lot of them were, as you put it, stupid (some were bloody criminals who had no right being anywhere near a school, that's another story though..), but I did have some good ones, and I have nothing but fond memories of my Maths and Chemistry teachers, both bloody good teachers and decent human beings.
As I'm now well over 30 years removed from my school days, I can look back at the actions of the 'stupid' ones and detect signs that they were just as fucked over by the school/education system as I was, it took a particular type of bastard to survive the 'political machinations' at my last school, the rot there was baked in, and started at the top, so no matter how idealistic the new teachers were at the start, the system changed them or spat them out. Unfortunately for us, the pupils, it was the damaged ones that stayed, and they further helped kibosh the education of a couple of later generations (my niece went to the same school 15 years after I escaped, same teachers, same old shit).
The Happiest Days Of Our Lives...eh?
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday April 12 2017, @02:19PM
Would there been any hindrance to just go to the library and study directly for the GPA as quick exit ticket into something better?
How did you repair the damage done?
(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.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by kaszz on Wednesday April 12 2017, @05:45AM (14 children)
Schools actually care?
If they do, they will have to provide some kind of bubble protection for students as long as the school last or time off to deal with the issues. This will conflict with hidden societal norms that everyone should manage themselves. So either schools takes care of students personal problems so they can focus 100% on studies or have the consequences manifest even if they are not supposed to do that.. according to norms.
Clinging to societal or political norms = "impossible" to fix
Solve the problem, and give a shit about what people think = fixed.
The core of it is to free up the students to focus fully on studies and do whatever it takes to accomplish that. Of course if the objective of the school is something else, well then it can't be fixed.
Divorcing parents - second home to distance oneself from the chaos.
Conflicts with peers - change class or school, or learn to manage some types of people. (again break norms)
Work issues (being laid off) - provide parents with unconditional economical support, ie break whatever right wing capitalistic dogma.
Health issues (a car accident) - Shrink? Second home? depends.
Legal issues - Pro Bono lawyers provided by the school or county.
Chaotic home environment or long distance home - second home.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @05:57AM
The reasonable way to handle all these things: let students fall back a grade as needed, preferably not a whole school year.
School isn't a foster home or orphanage, and it isn't personal private tutoring. Being these things is not reasonable for a school.
What is reasonable, at least in large school districts, is flexibility. (not going to work in a school with 100 kids)
(Score: 0, Disagree) by qzm on Wednesday April 12 2017, @06:45AM (4 children)
So, I notice that your solution to most problems seems to be.. to break up families?
Great, like that thinking. You came from a broken home yourself, I am guessing, what why should anyone else get any better?
As for all the rest of your rather nonsensical handwaving.. it seems to indicate you have very little actual life experience, and
are in the middle of a rather angst-driven anti-society phase, most probably you feel you are special, but that society does
not appreciate you as it should (damn those norms).
Dont worry, in time you will get over this, realise that actually, shit happens. Not everyone actually has to follow a single typical
path (oh dear, is that a 'norm'?), and actually kids 'dropping out' because of reasons is always going to happen, as is very far
from the end of the world, as actually a lot of them will find they land on their feet and take another, often very positive path.
The sooner the US gets over its view that a 'higher education' (in just about any throwaway subject) is REQUIRED to be a meaningful
member of society, the sooner this will be a non-issue.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @08:54AM (1 child)
Considering that most school dropouts are male children, that male children are predominantly being judged on their capacity to sit still and behave like little girls and being increasingly diagnosed as suffering from ADHD, and that most kids who dropout are actually raised only by their mother owning to our current custody laws, I will say that breaking of families is pretty much THE cause of dropping out.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday April 12 2017, @02:28PM
Or the father dies and the mother has to take over the bread winning duties as was my case. Didn't drop out but lots of summer and night school helped me squeak out right on time.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday April 12 2017, @02:24PM
(Score: -1, Failed Reading Comprehension)
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday April 12 2017, @02:35PM
So, I notice that your solution to most problems seems to be.. to break up families?
You did notice something which isn't there.
Sometimes one can need time of while problems are dealt with. Kind of like when you turn off your computer to remove dust or upgrade hardware. It doesn't mean you hate electrical power. It just means it needs to be switched of for a while.
Shit happens but the consequences can be minimized. And time is usually of the essence when a teenager so it may pay of to keep on track. If one feel that something else is better, well go for that. The point is to not be derailed against your own wishes.
Higher education is a necessity in many complex engineering tasks. That a specific school system got it wrong and focus on wrong things using bad methods won't make the need for knowledge and analytical capability go away.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday April 12 2017, @03:51PM (7 children)
My youngest daughter dropped out about a year after her mother left us. But she had even greater stressors at school, including bullies and especially a vice principal who hated white people and girls.
The good news is, she got her GED and is now Phi Beta Kappa at Cincinnati State, while working full time and carrying a full time student load.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday April 12 2017, @03:58PM (6 children)
How did she handle all these problems to get a GED and college?
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday April 14 2017, @06:15PM (5 children)
She started working when she was 14. She's smart and determined. Just heard yesterday she's getting an award at school today for leadership.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday April 14 2017, @06:29PM (4 children)
How did she get a handle on bullies and a anti-white vice principal?
(I presume the principal was black?)
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday April 15 2017, @04:08PM (3 children)
She evaded it by dropping out. That vice-principal was later fired after the school's getting so many parents' complaints.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday April 15 2017, @04:13PM (2 children)
How did she get the GED ?
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday April 16 2017, @09:34PM (1 child)
Went to classes and took a test.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday April 16 2017, @09:54PM
Sounds almost like a by the book plan to screw the school *system*.
*thumbs up*
She gets the education and the grades but the school is denied the opportunity to mess with her.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @06:36AM
I was just too dumb to learn. Yes, I blamed the teachers, I blamed the curriculum, I blamed the fact that I was just not interested because nothing they said to me made any sense and I was not interested enough to try to figure it out! Yes, I was too dumb to learn. And so my Father, in his infinite wisdom, sent me to a Military Academy. Not real military, where, you know, you could die. Just pretend. But they did wake you up really early in the morning, and I had to say, "Sir, yes Sir!" a lot. But I did learn how to grap women by the ***** and I am the president of the Greatest Country in the World now, and I think I can start a nuclear war with North Korea, and will. All because I dropped out of high school.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday April 12 2017, @01:31PM (5 children)
I found it amazing they didn't list pregnancy. I can think of three pregnant girls who dropped out. One went full on welfare mother 2nd generation, one did the GED and eventually became an accountant and turned out perfectly well probably because she had a 10/10 body, one kinda bounced around and turned out OK in the end. There's a lot of social signalling BS where people feel better about their holiness by saying their school is very supportive and has special programs for special people and BS like that, but the reality on the ground is you can have all the programs you want but one of the girls spent most of her second semester of senior year on medical bedrest and this was about one or two decades before online school was a thing and I guess bedrest isn't as much fun when you're sick as it sounds when you're healthy. The welfare mom was 2nd generation and nothing in the programs rewarded her for a degree, in fact having one would encourage the social workers to lean on her to get a job, so being unemployable was strategically useful.
Had a coworker, a good enough sysadmin engineer type, oddly enough dyslexic as all hell. I don't understand how he succeeded in a CLI and tech manual and google for all answers world, but he did somehow. Schools that can afford special education love kids like he must have been, well behaved just got a minor wiring problem and he's some special education reading teacher's walking paycheck. Schools that can't are like F you until you quit which he did. Seeing as his success was about 99% motivation and attitude and less than 1% reading ability, frankly maybe the school was right. Working with someone who can't read or write is really not all that different than working with a foreigner. Not much difference to me between a Korean engineer documenting something in Korean, and a dyslexic dude not even trying to document stuff. That employer was kinda weird cowboy style so they fit right in.
Oh I knew a kid got in some insane motorcycle accident broke a leg and was in the hospital for at least a couple weeks and the schools like "Umm you're not graduating this year you missed too much class" which also means all college plans smashed. I donno what happened to that kid. Why ever go to school again in that situation. You're basically starting your high school life over next September and hoping for a better year. I believe he dropped out and became a motorcycle mechanic.
I can think of another kid was in my electronics class at school disappeared one day for a couple weeks, was informed he can't graduate now because he was gone too long. Apparently got a traffic ticket, family too poor to pay, then got pulled over again and tossed in jail. The judge was some kinda asshole who wouldn't let him go to class via supervised release (maybe he'd violated the rules in the past, I didn't know him well) so he sat in juvie hall and the school wouldn't play along either because he had kind of a record. Ironically he wasn't all that bad of a kid and last I heard he was a electronics bench tech at a local heavy industrial manufacturer, the kinda guy installing those SCADA systems and OSHA electrical stuff. He makes as much money as I do, although he works a lot harder physically and lots of overtime.
I live and grew up in an area with stratified races and social classes and a decade or two before meth arrived so I know no bad stories because any really bad outcomes means they moved away to die. The only stories I have are suburban white kids who failed but turned it around to keep living here. Also when I was in high school they were tracking kids quite intensely so I only knew the motorcycle kid from having grown up about 5 houses away from him, in school there was no mixing classes and the uni kids only had classes with other uni kids, even in gym class I don't think I knew anyone in the lower social classes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @02:52PM
I am shocked, absolutely SHOCKED after hearing about your childhood environment.
OK I'm lying. That dovetails so perfectly with your right-wing beliefs. You grew up in a town that sounds like the breeding ground for such mentalities. Class stratification, race segregation, yup! At least you don't seem to have come out of it with serious problems, nothing a little education and worldly experience won't fix!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @04:33PM (2 children)
better not give those kids a free lunch, that woman is clearly a degenerate that was not failed by the lack of abortions or religious guilt manipulations by others. She chose to drop out!
Granted, she chose to have sex, too. but 18 years of hardship, if not longer, is a high price to pay compared to sex education and availability of female health services.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday April 12 2017, @09:35PM (1 child)
I find it a fascinating display of projection that in most of the examples I provided it was the hyper-left-wing education system that screwed those kids over by telling them they can't graduate because they missed too many class hours for a variety of reasons. The concept that becoming educated is the same thing as serving a prison sentence is kinda bizarre to start with, but its what we got, ya gotta do the time to get the diploma and most of the kids I can think of who failed to get the diploma failed because they had a realistic excuse for not doing the time ranging from jail to pregnancy to hospital.
Yet you go on some crazy rant seeming to imply the right wing was out to get them. The people that screwed those kids over were quite literally 60s boomer hippies of the most extreme sort. Leftism exists solely to perpetuate itself, not to help defenseless little kids or something. The dropouts were interesting examples of that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @10:28PM
so then why mention pregnancy if the problem you state is tardiness or absenteeism?
i find it hard to understand how a 60s boomer hippie has anything to do with some girl getting pregnant and having no support system available, the sort of future that buzzard hopes to achieve for his district. he doesnt strike me as an aging hippie. he strikes me as a shoot the commies when he sees the whites of their eyes type.
i dont know anyone that got kicked out of school for not getting enough credit hours. in fact, they graduated later as a form of punishment--they were told it would take longer!
anyone dropping out by me knew they wanted to do that so they could smoke weed and play the guitar and wait for their big break that never came. perhaps that is the intent you were aiming at for the pregant girls, but the girls are not running with the drug crowd. their getting pregnant because they are fertile and dont have good access to healthcare because its forbidden or taboo for teenagers to have sex.
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Wednesday April 12 2017, @09:18PM
Never knew any dropouts myself... I should have dropped out though. I was miserable my last year. Nothing to do, really, except sleep in every class and wait. Nearly everyone in my high school class from 9th grade graduated.
Not everyone though. A couple died in gang fights, or fighting drug dealers. A guy I used to hang out with was expelled the day before graduation for drug dealing; we knew he'd get arrested for it eventually though. Some of us had tried to warn his parents, our own parents, school officials, etc but they did not believe us (he was very personable and got good grades...) and so he got picked up in a police sting. He couldn't have waited a couple days to sell them drugs, I guess.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @04:06PM
"suddenly drop out" is two months later?
That's not very sudden.