I never found school to be all that boring. I kind of liked high school, with its different clubs and sports teams to join, cool people to meet and interesting things to learn.
Given my positive perspective of school, I was alarmed to read that 1.2 million students drop out of United States high schools each year. That’s one student every 26 seconds. That means about four high schoolers have dropped out since I started typing this column.
Do kids really think high school is that bad? Why do they choose to drop out?
In the 20th century, three prominent researchers — Jonathan Doll, a fellow at Harvard’s Center for Education Policy Research, and Zohreh Eslami and Lynne Walters, associate professors of teaching, learning and culture at Texas A&M University — proposed the main factors that led kids to drop out of high schools fell into three categories: students “pushed out” when affected by adverse influences, students “pulled out” by personal circumstances that prevented them from graduating and, finally, students “falling out” when they do “not show significant academic progress in schoolwork and becomes apathetic or even disillusioned with school completion.” While “pulled out” and “pushed out” comprised factors like financial difficulties or enlistment in the armed forces, “falling out” essentially means the dropout got tired of going to school.
This last one caught my eye: According to the 2002 iteration of the study, 14.3 percent of the subjects dropped out of high school because they became apathetic or disillusioned with school completion. You might argue that things have changed since 2002, but a Business Insider article from 2015 reported that 25.9 percent of dropouts quit school simply due to boredom. But high school dropouts are a population in which, as of 2009, the average worker makes $20,241 per year, and 31 percent between the ages of 18 and 24 live in poverty. Still, nearly 15 percent of the population of high school dropouts reject school because they just don’t like it?
Do they know the alternatives?
If we want to keep kids in school, we should teach them just what constitutes the alternative: a labor-intensive, physical job that makes them wish they hadn’t ditched that air-conditioned classroom.
I appreciate this because I worked a part-time job at UPS this summer, one that is nearly identical to many entry-level labor jobs that you could get without a high school diploma.
The workday at UPS would last about five hours. We’d start at a set time announced toward the end of the previous day. I’d pull into the parking lot every workday 15 minutes before start time with a sinking feeling in my stomach. I wasn’t nervous. I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t angry. But it felt like my gut was being pulled down by some package-induced gravitational force.
Before I entered the complex, I’d have to go through a metal detector — no phones are allowed in the building. They say it’s because the metal or the signal or something interferes with the scanners, but we all knew that the supervisors just didn’t want us getting distracted.
Walking into the guard office a hundred yards from the complex was almost the worst part of the day. It always smelled like yogurt. Probably because the guard ate a lot of it — the vanilla kind, I think. He had a mustache, salt- and pepper-colored with specks of yogurt in it.
After passing through the shack, I walked to the main building where all the packages moved from semis to sorters to actual UPS delivery trucks. I really don’t know how the whole system worked, actually; I liked to get in, do my job and get out.
Speaking of my job: I was on “the unload,” so I had a number of responsibilities that ranged widely in scope and needed to be handled in a timely and reliable manner. Just kidding. I picked up packages and I put them on a conveyer belt. No, really, that’s pretty much it. They were heavy, I had to be fast and I had to make sure the label was facing up, but that was my job. I remember when I interviewed and the lady said I’d probably be unloading packages. That can’t be too hard, I thought. That seems cool.
I thought.
The trailers we unloaded were jam-packed with boxes and hot air. A steady smell, one of sweat and cardboard, blanketed each truck. We’d extend the conveyer belt into the truck and place the packages one by one on the moving belt.
Sometimes I got to unload trailers with a partner. This was easier, and the conversations could be interesting. I met nice guys at UPS; they all liked sports and music, and we shared a bubbling hatred for the job.
We’d get a 10 minute break around halfway through the night. This was when a mass of people would march out of the east exit and smoke cigarettes. The non-smokers, like me, went to the break area, a small room that looked like a 1970s diner. It had orange booths and wood-paneled walls, with a TV that always played grainy Chuck Norris movies.
When the night ended I would clock out and head to the guard shack, where the mustachioed yogurt man bid everyone farewell with his metal detector. An empty yogurt cup lay by his clipboard. I smelled like sweat and cardboard. My arms felt heavy and my eyes stung from all the dust in the trailers. My fingers were sticky with ink. I longed for an air-conditioned classroom, where all the ink went onto blank pages and dust was found only in the library, on the books no one ever checked out. There was yogurt, but only a little, and only in the lunchroom. I wanted the classroom back. Why would anyone leave school?
Billy Stampfl can be reached at bstampfl@umich.edu.