Report: Our High Schools May Not Adequately Prepare Dropouts For Unemployment

August 3, 2005 | Issue 41•31

She added: "Easy grading encourages students to be sloppy and late handing in homework—a skill that makes future deadbeats very competitive in stonewalling landlords and bill collectors."

Chao said educators need to think outside the classroom and give kids some real off-the-job experience.

"Increasing suspensions and expulsions is a good start," Chao said. "Furthermore, scoliosis exams should be made more routine, so students learn to adapt to the all-underwear wardrobe typical of the non-working class."

Chao also suggested that schools hold more blood drives, which would prepare dropouts for visits to their local blood-plasma donation centers for quick and easy cash.

Some educators say the report paints too bleak a picture of schools' efforts to instill students with a lack of ambition.

"We are doing a terrible, terrible job," said James Dunham, the principal of HS 445 in New York. "We literally could not be doing any worse."

Dunham highlighted the fact that the hallways of his school are lined with vending machines that sell nothing but unhealthy snack products such as soda and potato chips, both of which acclimate students to the diet of a jobless lowlife.

Susan French, a spokesperson for the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers' union, said educators are superb role models for the unemployed dropouts of tomorrow.

Said French: "Students spend seven hours a day surrounded by adults who despise their low-paying jobs. If the critics out there know a better way to discourage a young person from entering the work force, I'd like to see it."