Dropping Out - A Community Epidemic

Sunday's front page headline was quite disturbing. It said something about students starting the ninth grade and then finishing high school. Imagine that! They quit in the ninth grade. The story in Sunday's The Virginian-Pilot profiled several ninth graders at Woodrow Wilson High School in Portsmouth. All of them had serious issues and one was even preparing to repeat the grade a third time. In talking to my teenage son recently about this, "School is no big deal attitude," he told me that some kids have accepted the idea that their futures are a dead end. This is quite disturbing to me. How can a teenager, with so much potential to change the world, be so hopeless? There are myriad of reasons, such as no real parental support and/or discipline, substance abuse issues, financial hardships, etc. I was taught that each and every day that you're breathing -- you can make a difference in your life. If a kid's family life is like a battlefield day-in and day-out, then I can understand the hopelessness. I still believe that the public school system has not done a good job of showing children the relationship between education and earning a buck. We parents have to remain diligent in showing our own children the importance of staying in school. But we have got to do more. We have got to find a way to help other children who have lost all hope of getting an education. I don't know what the answer is, but I will continue to nurture my own son, young cousins and kids within my sphere of influence. I will preach the benefits of education to anyone who will listen.