High-School Dropouts

After 30 years of teaching, I would like to respond to your two articles on school dropouts.

It is unfair to criticize dropout students for not taking education seriously when their role models in their schools also do not take education seriously.

During the 1987-88 school year I counted 71 fund-raisers and sales in the bulletins at La Puente High School in the Hacienda-La Puente Unified School District. Although teachers were told at the beginning of this year not to take class time for fund-raisers, this rule has not been enforced.

When class instruction is disrupted because teachers are distributing fund-raising products, collecting money and doing bookkeeping, students get the message that making money is more important than acquiring knowledge. Besides, is it ethical to have our students exploited, when they sell fund-raising products for private companies that pay no wages or overhead?

Considering the high dropout rate and the fact that our national academic proficiency ranks among the lowest in the world, the disruption of our children’s education with exploitative fund-raisers and sales is unconscionable!

If we really want to reach potential dropouts, our schools can cancel all non-teaching duties; instead of sponsoring fund-raisers and other frills before and after school, teachers can be assigned to counsel and/or tutor low-achieving students.

GILBERT A. RUBIO

Arcadia