by Joanne Smith

Created on: January 06, 2010

I believe children have a right to an education and I don’t believe in allowing them to get in the way of their own futures. 

As the daughter of two regretful high school dropouts, a daughter in-law of two regretful high school dropouts, as a sister in-law of two high school  dropouts and a sister of a high school dropout I am a witness to how immature decision making can impact ones life. 

The once plentiful job market enticed many high school dreamers to take a road paved in high factory salaries and long hours of repetitive jobs.  Their dreams of money and big homes were replaced by painful injuries caused by the type of work they did.  The freedom in making the decision to work where they wanted was slowly lost as factories closed down and new employees began looking for candidates that had the most amount of education.  Hardworking, loyal men and women who had left their educations behind in the wave of easy to come by jobs were now standing in unemployment lines waiting for a check someone else was now earning for them.  The government standards for getting employment had risen but it failed to take with it the students, unable to see the future, who had dropped out of high school. 

Students of today know the increased demands required to gain employment.  They know how completive it is and how much education is needed to get into their desired fields.  What they do not know is the knowledge that can only be gained from life experience.  As six teen and seven teen year old children step out into the world they are seeing it from a child’s perspective, one that is idealistic and one that would never spit them into the gutter and into a welfare line.  They do not have the benefit of experience to guide them as the adults in their lives do. 

This world is changing.  Children need the responsibility of their own education to be taken seriously.  The option to drop out before completing high school is a key to failure.  Why as adults would anyone possibly want to set up our future up for failure? 

For parents who do not always have the words or backbone to encourage their children to finish school would have the law to back them in getting their children to school. 

Excuses are amazing words.  For every undesirable task there are a million reasons why it does not need to be finished.  Instead of standing behind your child’s excuse begin looking

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