Learning 2.0

This is a topic I myself am worried for future with my children and what they are going to go through! You can never be over-educated, no matter what people say. Cheers to the older people that sit next to me in my college classes trying to better themselves!

After doing a bit of research, not to my surprise, the US ranks 22nd out of the 27 established countries for graduation rates. It used to be ranked one of the highest and each year we fall more and more short of that. But why? Why do we continue to see a consistent decline in our education system year after year after year? Is it the students fault? Teachers? Or parents?

Starting with the teachers, who go get their college degrees to teach these students, but then barely get paid enough to pay off their student loans before they die, are they to blame? The teachers in our education system have to love their jobs. If they didn't love their job, they would've easily went back to school or attended more school and increases their chances of opportunity to find a different job. Unfortunately our education system is suffering because more and more teachers are finding better jobs that they can actually live off of, and the high school system is stuck with the student teachers that are still in school, or the older teachers that don't feel like they have the time to go back to school. So whats the solution here? The obvious, pay our teachers more! Everyone wants to complain, but then when their students get to school and the parents are doing their homework, they might reconsider. 

Students that drop out tend to earn minimum wage until they've received their GED. Weird right? Ha! In order to succeed in this society today, you have to educate yourself. Does that require you to get yourself in debt by attending college for 6 years because you can't pick a major? Not at all. Go learn a trade! If you want to be successful, you have to have something to give to the world in order to receive something in return. Whether it's photography, mechanic, construction, all the above, any one of those, you practice enough and get really good at your trade, you will succeed.

PARENTS! As you can tell, I obviously like to blame the parents the most for the amount of high school dropouts. It's their job to teach their children from a young age the importance of education. If they don't, they can't be mad when their 57yr old son is still living in their basement. If parents took the time to help student's with their homework, at any age, and show them that they care about their education just as much as the student's should, I believe the students would start to believe in themselves and WANT to better their education. 

Not every child has parents, or people to look up to, etc. and I don't have an answer in that case. I work with children in this situation everyday and the only people they have are the staff members like me that are forcing them to go sit in a classroom Monday-Friday. Whether or not they do their work is their choice, but as a staff member I continuously try to give them hope for themselves because nobody has ever instilled that in their lives before. 

Education is important. If every parent instilled this belief at a young age, I would be interested to see the number of dropouts then. I know as a parent education is one of the top things on my list of priorities to teach my children!