I was listening to a newscast last night about ways of dealing with dropout rates. This wasn't college dropouts. It wasn't even high school dropouts. It seems middle school students are opting to drop out in record numbers.
Middle school students?
They are dropping out because they believe they're not going to "make it", so why bother.
What do these youngsters think "making it" means?
The answer hearkens back to what NextStage learned in its study of recruiters and recruitment practices nationwide. People are applying for jobs that they are completely unqualified for, lacking rudimentary skills to enter the work force and expecting major compensation packages.
People -- especially the young, it seems -- have gotten it into their heads that they should step out of school into full compensatorial honors. Wow! Where do I sign up for that?
I wonder if this is just another aspect of too much information coming at people too fast. It's increasingly difficult to decide what to pay attention to, what to focus on, what to learn and what will be of benefit. Forget about studying something that might be useful next year, it's come down to "what do I need to know to be on top of things for the next week?"
So we're allowing ourselves to become ignorant because there's too much to learn. Because there's too much to learn there's not enough time, hence one will never excel, so why bother? You come out of the gate convinced you'll never make it and, as Henry Ford would say, whether you believe you can or believe you can't, you're right.
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