by Sarah Lippert

Created on: October 09, 2010   Last Updated: October 10, 2010

From a child development stand point, it is an absolute pure miracle that our students are walking away from public schools with any knowledge at all. As the government has continued to funnel money into (and out of) the schools and mandate their processes, the idea of a developmentally centered curriculum has been thrown out in many cases. The sad reality is that the person that suffers the most from this is our students. It is important to consider this factor when considering the long-term drop out rate. If students are not 'sold' on school by sixth or seventh grade, the chances of them ever enjoying or putting effort into school declines drastically. I have found this to be true on all socio-economic levels.

Accord to Piaget's stagesof development, children are considered to be pre-operational until around age 7. The term Pre-Operational means that the child is still learning to put words and language to his or her surroundings and learns by doing. Children in this stage are hesitant to take on the view point of others and typically learn better through hands-on experiments. Unfortunately in many elementary schools across the nation, this view point has been abandoned and students in this age range are taught using books, lectures and tests. As I previously mentioned, if students do not find their niche in school by the seventh grade, then they most likely never will. Typically a college drop-out can still find a production, fast-food or service industry type of job. What are the effects of dropping out of elementary school?

It is obvious that a student could never drop-out of elementary school, but mentally they will begin to shut off their brains if the things going in it do not make sense. You see, the brain hates crap. The human brain would rather shut itself off and hear nothing, then to try to make sense of a million things that are too complicated to comprehend in childhood. In the end, the budget cuts that have led to hard desks, larger text books and reduced staffing are causing our children to become significantly less interested in the idea of school itself.  You see, you and I will be the ones relying on the care of the next generation(s) as we age. I am afraid that as this trend of the prison-like schools continues, the only person we are hurting is ourselves.

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