Real Life Story: Dropping Out without Falling Through
Read about one mom’s story and how, despite her son’s oppositional behavior, she managed to keep him from dropping out while giving him a very distinctive outlook on life.
[Read more »]
Steve was only a few weeks into seventh grade when I got the call: He was being suspended for three days for fighting. The call wasn’t unexpected, but the suspension was. Steve had never liked school. Every year he stalked into the classroom, surly and stubborn. Every year I would get a call. “He doesn’t cause trouble, exactly,” his teachers would say. “He just doesn’t do anything he’s asked.”
Eventually I put words to it: oppositional behavior. Steve was smart and inquisitive; he could figure out how things worked, and he had a good heart, but he was determined to do what he wanted at his own pace.
A suspension for fighting was a new low, however. Ever since the switch to middle school, Steve had struggled to find his niche on the social food chain. This latest infraction was an attempt to fit in with the crowd he had identified as “cool.”
“What are we going to do?” I wailed.
“We could just leave,” my husband joked.
It was as though a key turned in a lock. I could almost hear the “click.” Crazy as it seemed, a radical change appealed to me deeply, and I thought it might do the trick for Steve, too. Steve and Julia, his ten-year-old sister, were the only children left at home. Both my husband and I were self-employed. The time seemed right.
So we left. We sold our house and cottage, the back forty and the fine china. We bought a monster truck and a trailer that had tiny bunk beds in the rear. A year later, on September 19, 2000, we hit the road.
We didn’t have a plan. We didn’t want to exchange one harried life for another, one set of deadlines and obligations for new ones; we didn’t want to see all the state capitols or national parks. Steve had been reading The Black Pearl and wanted to visit La Paz, Mexico, where the book is set. That seemed as good a place as any to spend the winter, and it was as close as we came to an itinerary.
For the next year and a half we meandered through the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. We did visit some national parks and state capitols, but mostly we stuck to byways and back roads. We traveled the length of Highway 1 in Baja California, Mexico, and stayed a month in lovely La Paz. We followed the migration of the gray whale up the west coast of the U.S. and spent another month on Vancouver Island. We meandered through British Columbia, along the Rockies, and down the Rio Grande. We visited New Orleans and the Gulf Coast before the devastation of Katrina and wound our way back up the Mississippi River and east along the Natchez Trace, stopping at the birthplace of the blues in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and of Elvis in Tupelo.
The trip was a magical, transformative experience, and it gave the kids a far richer education than they could have gotten at a desk in school. But there were some unexpected effects as well.
For one thing, since we were completely disconnected from all electronic crutches—no TV, no Internet, not even a cell phone—the kids were forced to entertain themselves. They learned to read for pleasure, and they devoured books. Boxes of them. We stormed used bookstores throughout the country and begged relatives to send more.
They built a palm-frond shelter (a “palapa”) at one camping spot in Mexico and a debris hut at another in Indiana. Steve lashed driftwood together to make six-foot stilts at our winter campground on the Gulf Coast and became adept at stalking through the dunes like a crane.
In Texas, he spent the night alone at the top of Guadalupe Peak, kayaked down the Rio Grande, and started an RV-washing business in Castroville.
The kids learned about astronomy when we visited national observatories, but they also saw the dazzle of the night sky in the pitch black of open desert. They learned about geography and land forms and rocks and fossils. They identified the creatures that live in tidal pools, oceans, rivers, forests, and deserts. “Today I saw a manta ray, an eel, a whale, and a starfish,” Julia said once with a satisfaction I totally understood. And it wasn’t even noon yet.
They became kids again. On the cusp of adolescence, we snatched back a few more months of childhood. They fought, of course, but they also played together like children. Once, camped by a backwater of the Arkansas River just as twilight fell, I became aware that my kids were laughing. They were playing blindman’s bluff in the soft dark, and they were laughing the full-throated laughter of childhood. I hadn’t heard that sound from them in a while.
But then, we all became kids again. We were wandering through a natural wonderland, encountering new and marvelous things every day. We all recaptured a childlike ability to play, to learn effortlessly, and to live in the moment.
When we returned—to the same state, but to a different community, the kids reentered school at their grade levels. While the trip didn’t magically make Steve a model student or change his recalcitrant attitude, it did change his image of the world and of himself in it. Steve spent his junior year as an exchange student in New Zealand, and managed to graduate, not without prodding, with his class the following year. He said to me once, “I’m not sure what would have happened if we hadn’t gone on the road, but I don’t think I would have done well.”
Certainly, this isn’t a solution for everyone, but it does illustrate that there are many approaches to educating our children. Rather than continue slogging down an academic path that clearly isn’t working, it might help to think outside the box. What are your child’s strengths and weaknesses, personally and academically? What environment might appeal to his learning style? What creative approach might succeed? I found that when we approached them positively, school personnel were willing to work with us. They gave us curriculum suggestions and books for the road and accommodated our unorthodox situation when we got back. Many teachers even admired the experience the kids had had. One lesson I learned from the trip is that it is possible to do more than I ever imagined. It’s a lot more fun to explore possibilities than to live with limitations.
Real Life Story: Dropping Out without Falling Through
Steve was only a few weeks into seventh grade when I got the call: He was being suspended for three days for fighting. The call wasn’t unexpected, but the suspension was. Steve had never liked school. Every year he stalked into the classroom, surly and stubborn. Every year I would get a call. “He doesn’t cause trouble, exactly,” his teachers would say. “He just doesn’t do anything he’s asked.”
Eventually I put words to it: oppositional behavior. Steve was smart and inquisitive; he could figure out how things worked, and he had a good heart, but he was determined to do what he wanted at his own pace.
A suspension for fighting was a new low, however. Ever since the switch to middle school, Steve had struggled to find his niche on the social food chain. This latest infraction was an attempt to fit in with the crowd he had identified as “cool.”
“What are we going to do?” I wailed.
“We could just leave,” my husband joked.
It was as though a key turned in a lock. I could almost hear the “click.” Crazy as it seemed, a radical change appealed to me deeply, and I thought it might do the trick for Steve, too. Steve and Julia, his ten-year-old sister, were the only children left at home. Both my husband and I were self-employed. The time seemed right.
So we left. We sold our house and cottage, the back forty and the fine china. We bought a monster truck and a trailer that had tiny bunk beds in the rear. A year later, on September 19, 2000, we hit the road.
We didn’t have a plan. We didn’t want to exchange one harried life for another, one set of deadlines and obligations for new ones; we didn’t want to see all the state capitols or national parks. Steve had been reading The Black Pearl and wanted to visit La Paz, Mexico, where the book is set. That seemed as good a place as any to spend the winter, and it was as close as we came to an itinerary.
For the next year and a half we meandered through the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. We did visit some national parks and state capitols, but mostly we stuck to byways and back roads. We traveled the length of Highway 1 in Baja California, Mexico, and stayed a month in lovely La Paz. We followed the migration of the gray whale up the west coast of the U.S. and spent another month on Vancouver Island. We meandered through British Columbia, along the Rockies, and down the Rio Grande. We visited New Orleans and the Gulf Coast before the devastation of Katrina and wound our way back up the Mississippi River and east along the Natchez Trace, stopping at the birthplace of the blues in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and of Elvis in Tupelo.
The trip was a magical, transformative experience, and it gave the kids a far richer education than they could have gotten at a desk in school. But there were some unexpected effects as well.
For one thing, since we were completely disconnected from all electronic crutches—no TV, no Internet, not even a cell phone—the kids were forced to entertain themselves. They learned to read for pleasure, and they devoured books. Boxes of them. We stormed used bookstores throughout the country and begged relatives to send more.
They built a palm-frond shelter (a “palapa”) at one camping spot in Mexico and a debris hut at another in Indiana. Steve lashed driftwood together to make six-foot stilts at our winter campground on the Gulf Coast and became adept at stalking through the dunes like a crane.
In Texas, he spent the night alone at the top of Guadalupe Peak, kayaked down the Rio Grande, and started an RV-washing business in Castroville.
The kids learned about astronomy when we visited national observatories, but they also saw the dazzle of the night sky in the pitch black of open desert. They learned about geography and land forms and rocks and fossils. They identified the creatures that live in tidal pools, oceans, rivers, forests, and deserts. “Today I saw a manta ray, an eel, a whale, and a starfish,” Julia said once with a satisfaction I totally understood. And it wasn’t even noon yet.
They became kids again. On the cusp of adolescence, we snatched back a few more months of childhood. They fought, of course, but they also played together like children. Once, camped by a backwater of the Arkansas River just as twilight fell, I became aware that my kids were laughing. They were playing blindman’s bluff in the soft dark, and they were laughing the full-throated laughter of childhood. I hadn’t heard that sound from them in a while.
But then, we all became kids again. We were wandering through a natural wonderland, encountering new and marvelous things every day. We all recaptured a childlike ability to play, to learn effortlessly, and to live in the moment.
When we returned—to the same state, but to a different community, the kids reentered school at their grade levels. While the trip didn’t magically make Steve a model student or change his recalcitrant attitude, it did change his image of the world and of himself in it. Steve spent his junior year as an exchange student in New Zealand, and managed to graduate, not without prodding, with his class the following year. He said to me once, “I’m not sure what would have happened if we hadn’t gone on the road, but I don’t think I would have done well.”
Certainly, this isn’t a solution for everyone, but it does illustrate that there are many approaches to educating our children. Rather than continue slogging down an academic path that clearly isn’t working, it might help to think outside the box. What are your child’s strengths and weaknesses, personally and academically? What environment might appeal to his learning style? What creative approach might succeed? I found that when we approached them positively, school personnel were willing to work with us. They gave us curriculum suggestions and books for the road and accommodated our unorthodox situation when we got back. Many teachers even admired the experience the kids had had. One lesson I learned from the trip is that it is possible to do more than I ever imagined. It’s a lot more fun to explore possibilities than to live with limitations.
Why Kids Drop Out of School
The risk factors in this article are the main reasons teens are dropping out of high school. Learn about each future predictor for dropping out and how to keep your kid in school and on the path to success.
[Read more »]
Teens drop out of school for many reasons, and the decision to drop out is rarely spur of the moment. Kids usually drop out of school following a long process of disengagement and academic struggle. Many teens say they were bored and frustrated with classes that didn’t seem relevant to their life. Or they felt they had fallen so far behind they eventually gave up hope. Teens report that no one really cared about their school experience, or they felt subtly “pushed out” by school staff who perceived them as difficult or dangerous.
What is absolutely predictable is that many kids who don’t finish high school do poorly in life. Without a high school diploma they will have a harder time finding a job, and they will earn much less when they do find one (about a million dollars less over a lifetime). They are more likely to have poor health, to live in poverty, and to have children at an early age, who in turn are also more likely to drop out of school. Nationally, seventy percent of inmates in prison didn’t graduate from high school.
While the reasons kids drop out vary, the following are six important risk factors:
- Academic difficulty and failure. Struggling in school and failing classes is one of the main reasons teens drop out, and this pattern often shows up early. Students who fail eighth grade English or math, for example, are seventy-five percent more likely to drop out of high school.
- Poor attendance. Teens who struggle in school are also absent a lot, and along with academic failure, absenteeism is an important future predictor for dropping out. As with the previous example, students who are absent for twenty percent of their eighth grade year (one day per week) are also highly likely to drop out in high school.
- Being held back (retention). Linked to academic difficulty, students who are held back and who are older than the kids in their grade also tend to drop out.
- Disengagement from school. Many kids who drop out say that school was boring and teachers did little to connect learning to real life. They didn’t feel invested in their school and they didn’t feel that adults seemed interested in them or their high school experience.
- Transition to a new school. A poor transition from the smaller, more protected environment of middle school to the anonymity of a high school can cause a teen to have difficulty catching up—and some kids never do.
- Other life factors. Pregnancy, family problems, and financial difficulties are all factors that distract a student from schoolwork and make keeping up more challenging.
The good news is that dropping out is easily prevented. Most teens who drop out had at least passing grades, and these kids say that, with some help, they could have completed high school. Parents who are involved in their kids’ education often make the difference between academic success and failure. Kids do better when their parents care: when parents make sure their kids get to school and are progressing well and when parents communicate their expectations for success. If problems arise, involved parents have laid a solid foundation for dealing with them.
Start early to prevent high school dropouts. Read the article “
Seven Middle School Ideas to Stay Ahead for Parents” for tips.
Why Kids Drop Out of School
Teens drop out of school for many reasons, and the decision to drop out is rarely spur of the moment. Kids usually drop out of school following a long process of disengagement and academic struggle. Many teens say they were bored and frustrated with classes that didn’t seem relevant to their life. Or they felt they had fallen so far behind they eventually gave up hope. Teens report that no one really cared about their school experience, or they felt subtly “pushed out” by school staff who perceived them as difficult or dangerous.
What is absolutely predictable is that many kids who don’t finish high school do poorly in life. Without a high school diploma they will have a harder time finding a job, and they will earn much less when they do find one (about a million dollars less over a lifetime). They are more likely to have poor health, to live in poverty, and to have children at an early age, who in turn are also more likely to drop out of school. Nationally, seventy percent of inmates in prison didn’t graduate from high school.
While the reasons kids drop out vary, the following are six important risk factors:
- Academic difficulty and failure. Struggling in school and failing classes is one of the main reasons teens drop out, and this pattern often shows up early. Students who fail eighth grade English or math, for example, are seventy-five percent more likely to drop out of high school.
- Poor attendance. Teens who struggle in school are also absent a lot, and along with academic failure, absenteeism is an important future predictor for dropping out. As with the previous example, students who are absent for twenty percent of their eighth grade year (one day per week) are also highly likely to drop out in high school.
- Being held back (retention). Linked to academic difficulty, students who are held back and who are older than the kids in their grade also tend to drop out.
- Disengagement from school. Many kids who drop out say that school was boring and teachers did little to connect learning to real life. They didn’t feel invested in their school and they didn’t feel that adults seemed interested in them or their high school experience.
- Transition to a new school. A poor transition from the smaller, more protected environment of middle school to the anonymity of a high school can cause a teen to have difficulty catching up—and some kids never do.
- Other life factors. Pregnancy, family problems, and financial difficulties are all factors that distract a student from schoolwork and make keeping up more challenging.
The good news is that dropping out is easily prevented. Most teens who drop out had at least passing grades, and these kids say that, with some help, they could have completed high school. Parents who are involved in their kids’ education often make the difference between academic success and failure. Kids do better when their parents care: when parents make sure their kids get to school and are progressing well and when parents communicate their expectations for success. If problems arise, involved parents have laid a solid foundation for dealing with them.
Start early to prevent high school dropouts. Read the article “
Seven Middle School Ideas to Stay Ahead for Parents” for tips.
What Parents Can Do to Keep a Child from Dropping Out of School
Research shows that parents of students of all ages can play an important part in keeping their kids in school and making sure they graduate successfully. Learn tips for elementary, middle school, and high school success.
[Read more »]
Students who drop out of school face a difficult future. They are more likely to be unemployed, incarcerated, or impoverished than high school graduates. However, families can play an important role in keeping their teens in school and making sure they graduate.
Family involvement is one of the most important contributors to school completion and high school success. The most accurate predictor of a student’s school achievement is the extent to which his or her family encourages learning. Success is more likely if the family communicates high yet reasonable expectations for the child’s future career and becomes involved in his or her education.
Students who actively participate in and identify with their school are more motivated to stay in school and more likely to graduate than those who are not involved with their school. After-school and extracurricular activities can be an effective way of engaging students who find academics frustrating.
Teens Need Adults Who Care
Many students who drop out feel that teachers, administrators, and others are not interested in them (Grobe, Niles, & Weisstein, 2001). Caring, knowledgeable adults can establish a climate of trust and support that lets teens know someone is paying attention. These adults can be “teachers, counselors, mentors, caseworkers, community members . . . who understand and deeply care about youth and provide significant time and attention” (James & Jurich, 1999, p. 340).
Tips for Parents: Help Students Succeed in School
Reading, writing, and math skills are the foundation for learning in all subjects. One of the most important things parents can do is help their children build these skills in their elementary school years.
For Middle School Students
The transition from elementary school to middle school is traumatic for many students and their families (Wells, 1989). Let your child know that you value education as important to his or her future and take the following steps
- Set aside time for homework every day, even if your child doesn’t have any on a particular day.
- Make sure your child completes homework. Find out if your school district has a homework hotline students can call for help.
- Limit the time your child watches television and plays video games to no more than one or two hours each day.
- Talk to your child about school problems and achievements every day.
- Help your child use problem-solving skills in difficult situations at home and at school. Praise good behavior.
- Know your child’s friends and their families.
- Let teachers know that you want to be contacted immediately if your child has problems with homework or behavior.
- If your child is struggling, seek help. Parents and other adults can reduce the likelihood of dropping out if they take steps to help teens cope with their problems.
For High School Students
To help make sure your teen graduates from high school, try the following tips, which are based on current dropout prevention research.
- Maintain contact with your teen’s teachers throughout high school.
- Monitor school attendance. If your child is skipping school, it may be a warning sign that he or she is having trouble.
- Encourage your teen to seek out extracurricular activities or employment to develop positive relationships and have success outside of a classroom setting. Many schools provide after-school and summer programs that cultivate new interests. Encourage your child to participate in at least one extra-curricular activity at school. These activities can help your child feel part of the group, important to the school, and more motivated.
- Help your child explore career options and find out what kind of education is needed to be successful in those careers.
- Let your teen know that individuals who earn a high school diploma are likely to earn twice as much each year compared to those who don’t have a high school diploma or equivalency.
- Help your child establish graduation as a priority. Keep track of the credits he or she needs to graduate.
- Identify postsecondary goals. The most important questions to ask are What interests your child? and What is your child good at? Postsecondary technical training or two-year community college programs are appropriate paths to meeting employment goals. If attending a four-year college is the way to reach your teen’s vocational goal, put steps in place to make this happen.
When There’s a Problem
If your child is not doing well or is beginning to have behavioral problems in school, consider these steps:
- In some cases, a tutor can help a student who has fallen behind or who has missed important concepts.
- Sometimes, a child’s personality may clash with that of the teacher or another student. Meet directly with the teacher to determine if there is a problem or misunderstanding. In some cases, everyone may benefit if you request that your child be transferred to a different classroom.
- Monitor your teen’s attendance and school performance. Periodically check in with his or her teachers to find out how things are going.
- Concentrate on your child’s goals instead of focusing on why he or she is unsuccessful in school. Have your child identify goals; develop a list of school, home, and personal barriers to reaching those goals; and devise strategies to overcome the barriers.
- If you suspect your child has a problem with drugs or alcohol, contact the school guidance counselor or a substance abuse counselor, help line, or an appropriate organization for information and advice.
- Consider alternative school settings. Options include magnet schools, alternative schools, charter schools, work-based learning programs, career academies, and general educational development (GED) programs. Include your teen in all discussions with school personnel.
Conclusion
Graduating from high school is a cornerstone of future success. By staying involved, focusing on individual strengths, finding the right school setting, and holding high expectations, parents can help their teenagers graduate and prepare for successful adulthood.
Abstracted from a report by Deborah Leuchovius, published on The National Center on Secondary Education and Transition (NCSET) Web site.
Additional Resources
References
Grobe, T., Niles, J., & Weisstein, E. (2001). Helping all youth succeed: Building youth development systems in our communities. Boston: Commonwealth Corporation.
James, D. W., & Jurich, S. (Eds.). (1999). More things that do make a difference for youth: A compendium of evaluations of youth programs and practices: Vol. II. Washington, DC: American Youth Policy Forum.
Wells, A. S. (1989). Middle school education—The critical link in dropout prevention. Gilbert, AZ: adoption.com.
What Parents Can Do to Keep a Child from Dropping Out of School
Students who drop out of school face a difficult future. They are more likely to be unemployed, incarcerated, or impoverished than high school graduates. However, families can play an important role in keeping their teens in school and making sure they graduate.
Family involvement is one of the most important contributors to school completion and high school success. The most accurate predictor of a student’s school achievement is the extent to which his or her family encourages learning. Success is more likely if the family communicates high yet reasonable expectations for the child’s future career and becomes involved in his or her education.
Students who actively participate in and identify with their school are more motivated to stay in school and more likely to graduate than those who are not involved with their school. After-school and extracurricular activities can be an effective way of engaging students who find academics frustrating.
Teens Need Adults Who Care
Many students who drop out feel that teachers, administrators, and others are not interested in them (Grobe, Niles, & Weisstein, 2001). Caring, knowledgeable adults can establish a climate of trust and support that lets teens know someone is paying attention. These adults can be “teachers, counselors, mentors, caseworkers, community members . . . who understand and deeply care about youth and provide significant time and attention” (James & Jurich, 1999, p. 340).
Tips for Parents: Help Students Succeed in School
Reading, writing, and math skills are the foundation for learning in all subjects. One of the most important things parents can do is help their children build these skills in their elementary school years.
For Middle School Students
The transition from elementary school to middle school is traumatic for many students and their families (Wells, 1989). Let your child know that you value education as important to his or her future and take the following steps
- Set aside time for homework every day, even if your child doesn’t have any on a particular day.
- Make sure your child completes homework. Find out if your school district has a homework hotline students can call for help.
- Limit the time your child watches television and plays video games to no more than one or two hours each day.
- Talk to your child about school problems and achievements every day.
- Help your child use problem-solving skills in difficult situations at home and at school. Praise good behavior.
- Know your child’s friends and their families.
- Let teachers know that you want to be contacted immediately if your child has problems with homework or behavior.
- If your child is struggling, seek help. Parents and other adults can reduce the likelihood of dropping out if they take steps to help teens cope with their problems.
For High School Students
To help make sure your teen graduates from high school, try the following tips, which are based on current dropout prevention research.
- Maintain contact with your teen’s teachers throughout high school.
- Monitor school attendance. If your child is skipping school, it may be a warning sign that he or she is having trouble.
- Encourage your teen to seek out extracurricular activities or employment to develop positive relationships and have success outside of a classroom setting. Many schools provide after-school and summer programs that cultivate new interests. Encourage your child to participate in at least one extra-curricular activity at school. These activities can help your child feel part of the group, important to the school, and more motivated.
- Help your child explore career options and find out what kind of education is needed to be successful in those careers.
- Let your teen know that individuals who earn a high school diploma are likely to earn twice as much each year compared to those who don’t have a high school diploma or equivalency.
- Help your child establish graduation as a priority. Keep track of the credits he or she needs to graduate.
- Identify postsecondary goals. The most important questions to ask are What interests your child? and What is your child good at? Postsecondary technical training or two-year community college programs are appropriate paths to meeting employment goals. If attending a four-year college is the way to reach your teen’s vocational goal, put steps in place to make this happen.
When There’s a Problem
If your child is not doing well or is beginning to have behavioral problems in school, consider these steps:
- In some cases, a tutor can help a student who has fallen behind or who has missed important concepts.
- Sometimes, a child’s personality may clash with that of the teacher or another student. Meet directly with the teacher to determine if there is a problem or misunderstanding. In some cases, everyone may benefit if you request that your child be transferred to a different classroom.
- Monitor your teen’s attendance and school performance. Periodically check in with his or her teachers to find out how things are going.
- Concentrate on your child’s goals instead of focusing on why he or she is unsuccessful in school. Have your child identify goals; develop a list of school, home, and personal barriers to reaching those goals; and devise strategies to overcome the barriers.
- If you suspect your child has a problem with drugs or alcohol, contact the school guidance counselor or a substance abuse counselor, help line, or an appropriate organization for information and advice.
- Consider alternative school settings. Options include magnet schools, alternative schools, charter schools, work-based learning programs, career academies, and general educational development (GED) programs. Include your teen in all discussions with school personnel.
Conclusion
Graduating from high school is a cornerstone of future success. By staying involved, focusing on individual strengths, finding the right school setting, and holding high expectations, parents can help their teenagers graduate and prepare for successful adulthood.
Abstracted from a report by Deborah Leuchovius, published on The National Center on Secondary Education and Transition (NCSET) Web site.
Additional Resources
References
Grobe, T., Niles, J., & Weisstein, E. (2001). Helping all youth succeed: Building youth development systems in our communities. Boston: Commonwealth Corporation.
James, D. W., & Jurich, S. (Eds.). (1999). More things that do make a difference for youth: A compendium of evaluations of youth programs and practices: Vol. II. Washington, DC: American Youth Policy Forum.
Wells, A. S. (1989). Middle school education—The critical link in dropout prevention. Gilbert, AZ: adoption.com.
Want a Long, Healthy Life? Stay in School
According to the Commission to Build a Healthier America, abundant evidence links higher educational attainment to better personal health and wellness. Read a summary of the Commission’s report.
[Read more »]
A September 2009 report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Commission to Build a Healthier America points to mountains of evidence that links years of schooling with better personal health and wellness. Here are examples from two studies: college grads live at least five years longer than non-high-school graduates; 26.7 percent of white non-Hispanic college graduates rate their health as less than very good versus 69.4 percent of white non-Hispanic high-school dropouts who do.
Not only are better-educated people healthier than less educated ones, but the children of people with more education are healthier, too. For instance, babies of mothers who are high school dropouts are twice as likely to die before the age of one as are the babies of college grads; children whose parents dropped out of high school are six times more likely to be in poor or fair health than are the kids of parents who graduated from college.
The report describes three ways education level links to health: health knowledge and behaviors, employment and income, and social and psychological factors. Let’s take a look at each category.
Health Knowledge and Behaviors
Common sense suggests that the more people know and the clearer they think, the better their health choices will be. Sure enough, research has found that greater educational attainment has been associated with healthful eating, getting exercise, and avoiding risk factors such as drinking excessively and smoking. In addition, better-educated people are quicker to change risky health behaviors in response to new evidence than less-educated people are.
Employment and Income
We all know that more education is the key to higher wages, but the actual numbers are quite startling. According to U.S. Census Bureau information, high school graduates’ lifetime earnings (in 1999 dollars) are $1.2 million, compared with $2.1 million for college graduates and $4.4 for those with professional degrees. A comfortable income helps people get the health care they need when they need it. Wealthier people are also able to live in safer neighborhoods with access to recreational facilities and other services, including grocery stores stocked with reasonably priced, healthful food.
Low-wage workers, on the other hand, have fewer resources to cope with medical, child-care, and other day-to-day difficulties. Understandably, they experience greater stress as a result. They also live in more dangerous neighborhood with fewer parks, well-stocked grocery stores, and other health-enhancing features.
Social and Psychological Factors
Studies reveal that better-educated people feel more control over their lives than less-educated people do. This sense of control encourages skills and habits such as problem solving and perseverance that lead to better health care and outcomes. More education is also linked to higher social standing, another factor strongly associated with better health. Social support is yet another way that education is related to health. People with more education have greater social support, both emotional and practical, and greater social support is linked to better physical and mental health.
The report concludes that education is the key to better health and a longer life for parents, kids, and generations to come. For details, and to learn more, visit the
Commission to Build a Healthier America. Read the “
Issue Brief: Education Matters for Health.”
Sara jo Schwartz is a education writer and editor based in Grand Haven, Michigan.Want a Long, Healthy Life? Stay in School
A September 2009 report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Commission to Build a Healthier America points to mountains of evidence that links years of schooling with better personal health and wellness. Here are examples from two studies: college grads live at least five years longer than non-high-school graduates; 26.7 percent of white non-Hispanic college graduates rate their health as less than very good versus 69.4 percent of white non-Hispanic high-school dropouts who do.
Not only are better-educated people healthier than less educated ones, but the children of people with more education are healthier, too. For instance, babies of mothers who are high school dropouts are twice as likely to die before the age of one as are the babies of college grads; children whose parents dropped out of high school are six times more likely to be in poor or fair health than are the kids of parents who graduated from college.
The report describes three ways education level links to health: health knowledge and behaviors, employment and income, and social and psychological factors. Let’s take a look at each category.
Health Knowledge and Behaviors
Common sense suggests that the more people know and the clearer they think, the better their health choices will be. Sure enough, research has found that greater educational attainment has been associated with healthful eating, getting exercise, and avoiding risk factors such as drinking excessively and smoking. In addition, better-educated people are quicker to change risky health behaviors in response to new evidence than less-educated people are.
Employment and Income
We all know that more education is the key to higher wages, but the actual numbers are quite startling. According to U.S. Census Bureau information, high school graduates’ lifetime earnings (in 1999 dollars) are $1.2 million, compared with $2.1 million for college graduates and $4.4 for those with professional degrees. A comfortable income helps people get the health care they need when they need it. Wealthier people are also able to live in safer neighborhoods with access to recreational facilities and other services, including grocery stores stocked with reasonably priced, healthful food.
Low-wage workers, on the other hand, have fewer resources to cope with medical, child-care, and other day-to-day difficulties. Understandably, they experience greater stress as a result. They also live in more dangerous neighborhood with fewer parks, well-stocked grocery stores, and other health-enhancing features.
Social and Psychological Factors
Studies reveal that better-educated people feel more control over their lives than less-educated people do. This sense of control encourages skills and habits such as problem solving and perseverance that lead to better health care and outcomes. More education is also linked to higher social standing, another factor strongly associated with better health. Social support is yet another way that education is related to health. People with more education have greater social support, both emotional and practical, and greater social support is linked to better physical and mental health.
The report concludes that education is the key to better health and a longer life for parents, kids, and generations to come. For details, and to learn more, visit the
Commission to Build a Healthier America. Read the “
Issue Brief: Education Matters for Health.”
Sara jo Schwartz is a education writer and editor based in Grand Haven, Michigan.