Most people hearing “Charlie and …” immediately think of “Chocolate Factory” and that is a great childhood memory of sitting on the couch and watching small Oompa-Loompas making the chocolate. It was definitely the life of joy. But growing-up always bring new realities, usually less fantastic but more problematic. And when it comes to being a student, a new Charlie appears, except that he is from the Dropout Factory.
The phrase “dropout factory” refers to failing high schools in America due to a large number of students choosing to leave schools or failing to complete education. Truth is that almost every high school in U.S has a high number of dropouts. The sad reality is that almost 80% of kids in Native American Communities end up leaving educational institutions.
The problems with the dropout Factory
This phenomenon earned its name because of a number of reasons:
- Teaching – Almost all schools lack in quality teaching, or more specifically, they lack in the art of instilling knowledge. Although, education system focuses on getting high quality teachers, schools are still deprived of an essence of providing students with material in an interesting and strategic manner. Teachers, simply deliver information to students but few mentor, stimulate, provoke or engage students.
- Learning – The foundation of good education lies in learning. However, people tend to stress so much on education that they overlook the importance of reviewing different learning methods. To divulge into the matter in hand, every student is different. Student tend to follow diverse learning tactics. Teachers rarely deal with helping their students to perceive information and therefore, students often fall prey to confusion.
- Testing – Testing is definitely essential. Standardized tests measure the performance of a student. In attempts to make testing an integral part of a student’s education experience, both learning and teaching are overlooked. Now, this is matter of concern. Tests should not be the dominant part of an education experience. In fact, at times students find the constant pressure of tests quite daunting and thus, loose the interest in education altogether.
- Expense – Student debt is perhaps the biggest problem they are currently facing. Teenagers going to a high school and then dropping out or graduating with a degree only to find themselves drowning in student loans is pretty much a typical scenario. Students almost failing in every class have it worse. Confused about their degree and overwhelmed by the astonishing amount of their debt they feel despondent and hence, they see no point in prolonging the education.
- Experience – It’s a known fact that education decides one’s future. However, education fail to provide students with worthwhile experience or a sense of completion. Boring class lectures resulting from typical teaching methods fail to ignite the curiosity of students. Consequently, students find themselves questioning the value of education and the degree they are working so diligently for.
As years pass by and people continue to be indifferent about the fundamental problems that result to dropouts, their rates dramatically escalate. We are all humans and thus problems must be addressed humanly by increasing the art of teaching, introducing new procedures of learning, reducing the rigidity of robot-like testing, decreasing education expenses and enhancing students learning experiences.