Education

How can students be motivated to stay in school?

First of all, I think the students should be motivated mainly by their parents and then by their teachers. Parents should motivate their children by telling them how being a high-school graduate will help them in life. The parent may mention how being a high-school graduate helped them or how they were hurt by being a high-school drop-out.

Teachers can help motivate students by making school fun along with the teaching of the regular lessons. Teachers could also invite various people that graduated from high-school and some that were drop-outs to tell their own personal story. This may help students see the reality of being a high-school graduate or that being a high school drop-out can seriously affect that persons' life.

Another thing that should be taken into consideration is that when a parent or teacher is talking to their child or student, the parent or teacher should not focus all on negative ideas. If they focus on negative ideas, and say such things as, "If you don't finish school then......," then the child could be demotivated instead of being motivated. Parents and teachers should focus mainly on the positive ideas when motivating someone.

How can the lure of drugs and money be overcome?

The lure of drugs and money can be overcome by showing students that drugs can be very bad and that a craving for money can lead a student to steal or anything else to get money, thus ruining their high-school career if they are caught breaking the laws. Once again, certain people can be brought in to talk to the students. I think having an actual person to talk to is better than just watching a video or having the teacher discuss the topic, because the person is right there, the students know that the situation is reality, and the students know he or she is for real and the students can ask the person their own personal questions.

The lure of drugs and money could also be overcome by teaching children, at a young age, good Christian morals. If good morals are taught at a young age then the morals will probably last through their life.

Parents need to be aware if there are any signs of these problems. If there are any problems, they must be corrected immediately.

The parents should also teach that money is not everything and that drugs cannot make you escape from reality and problems.

What can educators do to motivate students who lack interest in school, have no motivation, and no goal for the future?

As mentioned in topic number one, educators can talk to students and tell why school is important. Maybe a one-on-one talk with a student who lacks motivation would help that student regain their motivation.

If a student has no motivation, I think the educator should do a little research on him and his family to see why this student may have no motivation. If research shows that the student lives in a healthy environment and has understanding parents, a talk with the parents may need to occur. An educator may be able to give some tips to the parents on how to get their child motivated or a talk with the parents might help reveal another problem the child has, such as drugs or social problems. If another problem is discovered, the situation can be tackled in a different way to help spur some motivation in that student.

If a student has no goal for the future, then the school needs to work on a program that is required for students to help them discover their talents and abilities. Something like the OASIS test would be a good start. This goal-planning helps open up doors to the student that he or she may never have known were there.

An educator needs to find out what a student is interested in and help the student find goals. The educator should give statistics on what kind of job the student can get if he or she has graduated from high-school or if he or she does not graduate.

How important of a role should the parents play?

I think parents should play the biggest and most important role in every aspect of their child's life. The parent should play the biggest role in motivating their child. I also think the parents should play a large role in discipline. Parents need to discipline their child and I think there is less discipline happening in families today then there was before this time. I can tell that there is less discipline, just by the way I see children act. A lot of children seem to boss their own parents around. If parents and even schools had stricter rules and discipline, there would not be as much trouble as there is now.

Another subject that shows the lack of discipline in today's society is the amount of teen pregnancies, and the amount of teens running around late at night being troublemakers. If teens are running around at nights, that means that the parents are not controlling their own children. Parents need and should be aware of their child's activities and the people that they associate with. If parents know this, then they should be able to discipline their child and be reassured that there could or could not be a problem with their child.

Do you believe there should be more contact between parents and teachers?

I think parents and teachers need a lot more contact. For one, contact with each other will allow the parents to see how their student is doing and will allow the teachers to see how the parents are.

A while back, there were a lot of parent-teacher association groups, but now most parents both work and have little time for these kind of associations.

Over the last decade, between 347,000 and 544,000 10th- through 12th-grade students left school each year without successfully completing a high school program (table B1). Status dropout rates represent the proportion of young adults ages 16 through 24 who are out of school and who have not earned a high school credential. Status rates are higher than event rates because they include all dropouts in this age range, regardless of when they last attended school.

* In October 1999, some 3.8 million young adults were not enrolled in a high school program and had not completed high school. These youths accounted for 11.2 percent of the 34.1 million 16- through 24-year-olds in the United States in 1999 (table A, figure A, and table 3). As noted with event rates, this estimate is consistent with the estimates reported over the last 10 years, but lower than those reported in the early 1970s.

* The status dropout rate of whites remains lower than that