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‘Learn and Earn’: A father-and-son success story
By Bill Lindau
Can you believe this? Father-and-son high-school dropouts.
No, really. I know of both an old friend and his son who quit high school and went on to get their GEDs (general equivalency diplomas) at their local community college.
A lot of my classmates went that route, and a lot of kids today are still doing the “Learn and Earn” thing in the North Carolina school systems. A report in the Thursday, Sept. 1 edition of The Fayetteville Observer describes this phenomenon.
It says about 13,000 16- and 17-year-old dropouts earned their GEDs or adult high-school diplomas during the 2003-04 school year, according to information from the state community college system.
The report, from the Wilmington Star-News, pointed to one young woman as an example of this trend. She quit high school and has enrolled in Cape Fear Community College, to get her GED and take college courses. She told the reporter she wanted to be an orthopaedic surgeon.
“Robbie” (not his real name) the son of my old friends “Hank” and “Maddie”, quit school in ninth grade after having flunked one grade. But this year his parents got him into the GED program of an area community college, where he also takes college courses, including some music lessons.
Robbie’s father told me that the boy (Robbie just turned 17) is happy as a clam going to school. When I talked to Hank about a year and a half ago, Hank told me about Robbie failing a grade, and all the trouble he has at school. “He’s going to be 60 before he graduates,” Hank said.
Man, what a turnaround!
I’ll bet if it hadn’t been for this college, Robbie would be standing on street corners, pushing crack cocaine or something.
I know about this case because Robbie happens to be one of my classmates; I’m auditing a course in voice at the same college.
Here’s the ironic thing: Hank went to the same high school.
He dropped out early in his senior year and later got his GED at the college. The same college.
Hank was a really bright youth. I have known him since we were both juniors. The high school we attended opened that year, after the county schools became consolidated.
That high school was great, featuring courses in dramatics, accelerated English, advanced math, auto repair, graphic arts and a bunch of other vocational programs. We actually looked forward to school. I once entertained the idea of purposely flunking some courses when I got to be a senior, just to stay in the school another year.
Then the school went to the dogs. Many of our friends had graduated, and a great many teachers quit. Some of their great courses folded, too. It got to be a drag. Hank dropped out, and so did a lot of kids in my senior year.
As bad as it was, I stuck it out in my last year in the public schools system. I wanted to do the whole high-school thing, going to the senior prom and then walking across the stand in cap and gown and snatching my long-awaited diploma out of Principal J.R. Brendell’s hand. Free at last! So long, you old tyrant, you!
That’s one of the high-school experiences kids who quit and go through the college route seem to miss: That and the friendships. I can see the reasons for home-schooling, but I wonder what the parents are doing as far as finding companions for their kids goes.
The report says educators cite a lot of reasons kids quit high school. High-school dropouts aren’t all a bunch of dimwits with low I.Q.s, or a bunch of delinquents. Like my young friend Robbie and that aspiring orthopaedic surgeon, some of them really have a lot upstairs, and could end up becoming college professors, doctors and lawyers. Many of them come from lower-income families, and they may have to quit school to go to work and help support their families. Others have different learning styles that may not be compatible with their teachers’ methods. Others quit because of bullying, and still others are so bright they become bored, because the material’s too easy for them, the report says.
I have another friend, whom I met when we were in our 20s, who also quit high school. He got his GED at the local community college two months later, just before he would have completed his sophomore year in high school.
I’m glad to see so many kids going through the “Learn and Earn” initiative, which allows students go earn their GEDs and an associate degree at the same time, or earn credit’s toward a bachelor’s degree. If it weren’t for the GED program, a lot of kids would be working at dead-end jobs or selling dope on the streets.
But in the best of all possible worlds, there would be no need for such a program.
We pay for the public schools to give our children the education they need, and ideally, they would all be graduating on time. The dropout rate has decreased tremendously over the years; in 1960, only little more than 40 percent of students nationwide graduated from high school.
But still, kids are still dropping out of high school. There are some great courses, and some quality teachers, but still you have a lot of people not waiting to go through the graduation line to get their high-school diplomas.
A community college official I talked to about this phenomenon said, jokingly, “Bring them here. We’re glad to have them.” At the same time, the principals and instructors are shaking their heads each time a kid bids them “Arrivederci!”
I hope all the kids who are going to college early will achieve the success they hope for.
Now here’s a real task for our educators: Give the kids already in the school system the same kinds of hopes, so they’ll figure it’s worth sticking around for.
As soon as you see a kid who’s hitting the skids, for Pete’s sake, don’t leave him/her to wallow in the mire. Let’s see to them tout de suite! They don’t have to be destined for wretched, non-productive existences.
Go to the kid and lend a helping hand. You’ll never believe what a delight it is to rescue some troubled youngster from the abyss, turning that kid from a crabby person with a defeatist attitude to an adolescent filled with a lust for life, a joie de vivre that makes him/her want to do something with his life.
Let’s have more success stories such as Hank and Robbie -- in both the high schools and the colleges.
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Contact reporter Bill Lindau at blindau52@yahoo.com or (910) 975-3073.

posted by Bill Lindau @ 6:11 PM