Major cause of joblessness lies within U.S. schools- USA Today

[Bhaisahab]

In recent months, fears over the loss of U.S. jobs to lower-paid overseas workers have struck Americans worried they could be hit next. Job "outsourcing" has become a major issue in the presidential campaign, Congress has moved to fight the trend, and 30 states are weighing measures to bar outsourcing by government contractors.

While job outsourcing fires up all-American outrage, it masks a more prevalent problem: joblessness among young people that's caused by high dropout rates. Each year, about 4 million 18-year-olds should graduate from high school. Of those, 1.2 million drop out without a degree. Estimates of the jobs lost each year to outsourcing vary, with many economists putting the figure in the hundreds of thousands. That's far less than the millions of young who are unemployed because they didn't finish high school.

And unemployment among dropouts is growing. In 2003, 2.4 million young people ages 16-24 who didn't finish high school were jobless, up 9% from 2001.

Yet dropout-driven unemployment doesn't get the high-level attention of outsourcing because states hide the problem behind exaggerated graduation rates. North Carolina reports 92% of its high school students graduate. Independent studies estimate the actual rate at about 63%, according to a recent report by the Education Trust, a non-profit group. California says 87% graduate, when a more accurate estimate is 67%.

more...
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=679&ncid=742&e=1&u=/usatoday/20040331/cm_usatoday/majorcauseofjoblessnesslieswithinusschools

[Nay]

1. I don't want to minimize the problem of kids who don't

graduate from high school, but it seems to me that a lot of their jobs have been outsourced for many years (clothing mills, steel mills, etc.) -- and now it's the high-tech, highly skilled work being farmed out in order for companies to shrink those high salaries. IT, engineering, x-ray and med tech stuff, accountant work, etc. These are not jobs that HS dropouts are likely to get.

And frankly, every country needs to have a mix of jobs. Many of those HS dropouts aren't cut out for school, and will not do well in HS or college, and need to have other options for lifetime work. But this country is pulling the rug out from under ALL types of work and will ruin itself in the process unless we can stop it.

[trogdor]

4. You hit it on the head.

The problem is, just about everything one might aspire to is being reduced to the same sort of "commodity" labor that unskilled or semi-skilled factory labor has. Now you work at Wal*Mart, but you bust your ass at night school to get a tech degree. Once you get the tech degree, you find out the jobs that went unfilled when you started just aren't there anymore. Now what? Put the blue smock back on and get back to work?

We're running a trade deficit of $500 billion a year and soaring. I don't expect every paper clip, ten dollar transistor radio, and plastic picnicware set to be made in the USA, but surely there is something we can do that doesn't require US laborers to work for next to nothing. Back in the days before we all got Free Trade Fever (TM), we would use tariffs and duties to level the playing field so that American labor could compete. I'm convinced that the result was that there was a lot less really cheap plastic crap on store shelves. I am convinced that the majority of the stuff you see at Wal*Mart is designed to fall apart within a year or two of purchase. When things like microwave ovens become disposable, we're in trouble.

If we are to compete with foreign markets, let it be on the basis of quality, not the price of labor. I drive a Honda because it's better, not because it's cheaper (although it is indeed cheaper to operate in the long run because it rarely sees the inside of a repair shop). I could care less whether the car was made in Ohio or Timbuktu (I'm pretty sure the drivetrains were made in Japan). If you want to buy a really cheap car, you can go to Hyundai or Kia, but remember, you get what you pay for. Thankfully, DOT and EPA regulations on cars pretty much prevent the sort of race to the bottom on labor that has prevailed just about everywhere else.

[teryang]

2. Schools don't face drop-out problem?

Schools or governments?

[rfkrocks]

3. what do you expect in a country that was founded on reason

but now rejects it? 9/11 was tied to Iraq for MOST Americans-scary-the GOP wants to keep us as corporate and ignorant slaves-do we appreciate culture and the arts anymore? when i was a kid a working class family could go to see a Broadway show-now it is a high luxury-we mock intelligent thought because we want a "leader" WTF? education at the private college level will be in the hands of the rich only-how far we have fallen from the ideals of the new deal. If we don't pay attention to cities and rural area of course schools will fail-thats what poverty and lack of opportunity does-how much good could have been done with just 1/10th of the treasure and blood we spent in pointless Iraq:grr:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. No one wants to face up to

the anti-intellectualism in our culture.

For years, ever since I was a teenager in the 1960s, the word has been, "Stay in school so you can get a better job."

So what happens? Young John Doe graduates from high school and can't find anything better than a job at WalMart, just like his former classmate, Joe Blow, who dropped out after tenth grade. Stir in the mind-deadening atmosphere in the average high school, one that serves neither the academically-oriented nor the non-academically-oriented kids well, and the average student sees no reason to stay in school.

If I were designing a high school curriculum, I would emphasize being an informed citizen, so that you can't be fooled by the media conglomerates and the manipulative politicians, and I would keep hammering at that, because no one likes to be rooked.

Science and math would be required of everyone (and I'm saying that as one who hated high school math), with an emphasis on real-world applications, such as the biology of epidemics, the chemistry of cooking, and the physics of wireless communication.

I'd bring history alive with thought experiments such as "Imagine that you are a slave in pre-Civil War America. Write about your daily life" or "Get together in a group, discuss what might have happened if the British had put down the American Revolution, and present your conclusions" or "How could relations between the European settlers and the Native Americans been handled differently?" This would both reinforce the facts about history and teach research and thinking skills.

Sports are considered the cure-all for whatever ails teenagers, but the arts are just as important and more amenable to active participation throughout one's life. An eighty-year-old athlete is a novelty or joke--an eighty-year-old musician or actor can be stunningly good. Perhaps the Repiggies are into cutting out arts programs because they provide pastimes that replace the corporate media, and that's all the more reason to support them.

We need to get away from "school is for getting a good job" and move towards, "School will make you a more well-informed citizen." Then we have to redesign the schools so that it actually happens.

[Miss Authoritiva]

10. Perfect, perfect, perfect

I can't add a single point to your post. It's perfect.

[KG]

6. smoke-screen from the establishment

the author of this tripe should be ashamed.

7. That's absurd

If there are less qualified workers due to poor education, this would make the qualified ones more employable.

But there are millions of workers in the US who are qualified, and unemployed. The key is roughly the same can be had for cheaper elsewhere.

[NuttyFluffers]

8. gee, fits the reactionary plan perfectly

When William Bennett, who railed continuously against public education, becomes the Secretary of the Dept. of Education under the Reagan administration - and schools noticeably decline.

Now, outsourcing is driving out as many jobs as possible, mostly manufacturing and technology, and the blame has been passed to schools...

Sounds like passing-the-buck from one GOP caused problem to another GOP caused problem.

And the most scandalous part? No one will call them on it. They'll blame the "liberal" teacher's unions, and hippie/psychologist curricula, filled with "self-esteem," and new math.... Thus enforcing their privatizing of schools into religious schools...

The next time you have a conservative boob tell you it's all "dem liberal schooling in public schools not teacing kids" scream in their face that it's their damnable GOP freaks that *deliberately* set out to destroy public education, just like they *deliberately* decided to throw out our responsibility for our economy and depend upon the whims of abstract market forces. Scream in their ear. maybe they might lose an ear drum and will be forced to read books instead of listening to "hot talk.":evilfrown: :spank:

[Lindacooks]

9. This is bullshit

The people I know who are out of work have, at minimum, a B.A. or B.S. My dh, out of work now for almost 10 months, has a Master's degree.