children out of school in america - University of Tennessee Digital ...

critics do not contest the importance of credentials in
this society. Schools confer credentials. Credentials
are inextricably related to job status, and to the
hopes a youngster entertains for ·his future occupation.
While the debate can rage about the difference
a B rather than a C average makes on a child's
success in life, it is clear that children who do not
have any average - who are not in school - are
doomed to occupy the lowest positions in society.
Nobody understands this more than poor parents
who have learned from their own lives what it means
to be uneducated and dependent. They want so
much for their children to have it better "so they
won't be like us." They have few illusions about the
ways schools treat them and their children, but they
are also acutely aware of their lack of options. As
one white mother in Macon, Georgia stated: "[E]ven
the ways the $chools are now ... I don't know if
they're learning anything much, but it's better than
nothing."
We owe our children more than nothing. To
continue to deny our children schooling or to give
them as little as we can is so unfair to the children
denied, and so costly to the rest of us in future
dependency, as to be intolerable. That we single out
some groups of children who are different for special
deprivation of education is downright cruet It
profoundly violates American pretensions to provide
equal opportunity to all within its fold.
We recognize that the problems of children out
of school, or those who are in school but are badly
served, reflect their and their families broader treatment
in society. Reforms inside schools must be
viewed in tandem with reforms outside schools. We
suspect that children's educational attainments are
motivated as much or more by what they feel they
can become and by the job opportunities available to
them after school than by most things that occur
within schools. As one child asked: "Why should
I go to school if I am going to a factory?" The
economic burdens which make many children drop
out of school because they cannot afford to go or
because they have to help support their families
would be substantially alleviated by decent jobs and
a family income support program.
It is imperative that we undertake long-range,
broad change strategies as we chip away now at
more immediate reforms affecting schools. But we
should not let school officials off the hook. While
they cannot solve all the problems of the children
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