Drop It Like It's Hot

Drop It Like It’s Hot

School. In the best possible world, it’s a cooperation-filled learning hub viewed as the definitive setting for young children and older adults alike. Yet, most people know that the opposite of this description is true. Schools today are most often competitively-fueled proving grounds that label students based on test scores and numbers instead of actual ability. This causes unimaginable stress to students who only want to graduate or pursue higher education so that their lives in the future won’t be bereft of money or pleasure. However, this could easily end up as a pointless endeavor, since many with high school and even college level educations are without jobs, unable to support themselves financially. Therefore, students are better off dropping out of high school than staying or pursuing higher education.

Today, high school graduates have difficulty finding jobs. Multiple studies and censuses have been completed by various companies to determine the ratio of graduates with jobs and those without. One of these companies is the Economic Policy Institute, which has written a paper on this very subject. For example, it says “For young high school graduates, the unemployment rate is 19.5 percent (compared with 15.9 percent in 2007).” The stats show that today, there is about a 1 in 5 chance that high school graduates will be without a job. This means that 1 in every 5 students will be without a job when they exit high school. This makes their high school education pointless since they can’t express their knowledge anywhere. Furthermore, the Economic Policy Institute’s paper goes on to say “For young college graduates, the underemployment rate is 14.9 percent (compared with 9.6 percent in 2007).” This means that if high school graduates do go on to pursue higher education and major in a certain field, there is a 1 in 6.667 chance that they will not get the job that they went to school for. This means that they have to pay back student loans for practically no reason. Thus, pursuing higher education only wastes students’ time.

Another reason for students to drop out is because of their stress levels. Many of the students in today’s world have been compared to mental patients in the 1950s. Students have to juggle their own school work, family responsibilities, health issues and wellness, religious responsibilities, and other activities in their lives every day. Managing all of this stuff on a daily basis can easily cause a ton of stress that overcomes the students. For example, the National Public Radio’s website has an article that describes one student named Nora’s mental breakdown after not receive a GPA of 4.0 after working viciously for it. “Nora ‘had a total meltdown, cried for hours,’ her mother, Jennie Huynh of Alameda, Calif., says. ‘I couldn't believe her reaction.’" This is obviously not the good kind of stress. This type of stress not mentally hurts the students but causes physical reactions to them too. Crying for hours on end is not good for the body. It can cause headaches and pain around the rest of a student’s body. It can even cause depression. However, as the quote above shows, this stress can easily affect the rest of a student’s family. Nora’s mother was shocked to see her daughter react this way to a GPA score. The article also goes on to say that Nora was irritated with her siblings a lot more, thus showing how school related stress can easily destroy family relationships. However, this kind of stuff would not happen if students dropped out of school instead of pursuing higher education.

In conclusion, the stress high schools cause combined with the fact that higher education has an unreliability factor in terms of acquiring a good job proves that dropping out of high school is the best option open to students. Students’ go to school in order to learn more about how they can prepare for and be the best at their future occupations. Today, students like Nora commit a slow and painful suicide as they struggle with and submit themselves to an institution that causes them to endure both physical pain and mental agony. Therefore, in order to save the future of this wave of students, they need to stopping being students.

Works Cited

1. Davis, Alyssa, Will Kimball, and Elise Gould. "The Class of 2015: Despite an Improving Economy, Young Grads Still Face an Uphill Climb." Economic Policy Institute. Economic Policy Institute, 27 May 2015. Web. 26 Sept. 2016.