It has long been noticed worldwide that young people, at the age of being in academic schooling, often drop out, sometimes to get involved in wage earning, other times for reasons not so fruitful. The blame is not of the context here. But the effect, which is relevant to this discussion, is most often perilous to society. Such a situation should, and can, be improved by training, employing and re-schooling those disarrayed young.
Firstly, Government should take steps to train the out of school juveniles in skills that can easily be utilized in industrial or farming environment. That way the “drop-outs” will contribute to their own and country’s development and not become menaces to their society.
Secondly, public and private enterprises should take concerted measures to embed the unschooled youths in the national, even international, workforce. Everybody, regardless of his or her academic rapport, must be good for something, ranging from clerical desk jobs to technical handy work.
But, most importantly, in my opinion, the “dropped-out” juveniles must be given opportunities to get back on track. This may include free to access entrance exams in to different levels of institutional education. In the United States, the GED examinations offer high school drop-outs, beyond the age of 17, entrance in to university, basing on their aptitude scores in the GED, disregarding their otherwise track record. Even prison inmates there get this opportunity.
A young person dropping out of school is a big enough tragedy in itself, considering the untimely loss of a potential scholar. But this tragedy turns in to being the horror of all lest steps are not taken to rehabilitate this youth. We may, therefore, conclude here that the only way of improving the situation created by high school drop outs is practical rehabilitation by industry and sympathetic consideration by institutions.
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