Dropping Out of High School: The Ideology of School and Work

Abstract

This paper explores the tension between prevailing ideologies of the high school dropout as “loser” and data which indicate that many dropouts are highly motivated, intelligent, and critical of educational institutions and labor market opportunities. Attention is paid to who drops out, with a particular focus on gender, race/ethnicity, and class, and to how these dropouts are portrayed in social-science, popular, and teacher-training literature. It is concluded that explanations offered for the “tragedy of the dropouts” which isolate individual or family factors function to delegitimate dropouts' critique of schools and the labor market, bolster the image of education as the great equalizer, and deflect attention away from race, class, and gender biases which operate in schools and at work.

High school transition-related changes in urban minority students' academic performance and perceptions of self and school environment

“…In addition, students' views about the value of education may be affected by what they observe in the adults in their communities: that opportunities for meaningful job placement and advancement are few. In this context, escalating school absences may represent students' "perceptiveness" about the luck of promise that an education actually holds (Fine & Rosenberg, 1983).…”

What low-income parents wnat from schools: A different view of aspirations

“…They have devised ways to "get at" information about low-income people, without offending them by mentioning class status or by directly asking them what they know and how they feel. In contrast, Fine and Rosenberg (1983) have pointed out that many low-income people voice legitimate criticism of the public school and a number of school drop-outs (25 percent of all students) leave school not because they cannot succeed but because they feel the school has nothing to offer them or because they are disgusted with school practices.…”

Young peoples’ own stories about dropping out in Norway: An indirect qualitative approach

“…Brown & Rodriguez, 2009;Fine & Rosenberg, 1983;Fine, 1991;Alexander, Entwistle, & Kabbani, 2003;Jonker, 2006;Tanggaard, 2013) challenge how dropout is explained in terms of combinations of risk factors. Instead, they view dropout in relation to how people live their lives.…”