Suburban Guerrilla has a post up about Afghan girls trying to get an education, linking to this article about girls being attacked and sprayed with acid on their way to school, and the attitudes that send them back to school.

“My parents told me to keep coming to school even if I am killed,” said Shamsia, 17, in a moment after class. Shamsia’s mother, like nearly all of the adult women in the area, is unable to read or write. “The people who did this to me don’t want women to be educated. They want us to be stupid things.”

In her post, she mentioned girls in the U.S. dropping out in huge numbers. Cats, are they. I googled “U.S.drop out rates girls.” This one from the National Women’s Law Center cites statistics from 2007, comparing dropout rates for boys and girls. It doesn’t look good, for anybody.

… 30 percent of the class of 2007, or 1.2 million students, were estimated to have dropped out last
year.
2
The high school dropout crisis has received significant recent attention from researchers, policy makers and the
media. It has been widely reported that one in three boys, and nearly 50 percent or more of some racial and ethnic
groups of boys, will fail to graduate from high school with a diploma in four years.
3
This is an alarming finding
that demands prompt remedial action.
What has been generally overlooked, however, is that girls, too, are dropping out of high school at dangerously high
rates. In fact, one in four girls overall do not finish high school, and the numbers are worse for girls of color. One
in two Native American female students, four in ten Black female students, and nearly four in ten Hispanic female
students fail to graduate with a diploma each year.

It goes on to discuss the long term consequences to these people;

As compared to their male peers,
girls who fail to graduate from high school have higher rates of unemployment; make significantly lower wages; and
are more likely to need to rely on public support programs to provide for their families.

It goes on to casually mention that male high school drop-outs earn significantly more than women with a high school diploma; in fact, women don’t pass male dropouts on the pay scale until they have some college education.

The report ends with recommendations on how to keep these vulnerable people in school, and ways to get them back into school if at all possible. I didn’t notice “Punish anybody who has had sex” anywhere in the article. In fact, several pregnancy and parenting recommendations were stated, including larger desks. I hadn’t even thought about that. I remember when I was about three years’ pregnant and not being able to get into a booth at Perkins; I can’t imagine trying to wiggle into a school desk and getting comfortable enough to concentrate on work. Sounds like actual people were there, and thinking.

But then I got back to the original question; why do kids drop out in the U.S. when they aren’t being quite so actively encouraged to stop? I found this, from National Center on Secondary Education and Transition;

When youth drop out of school, it isn’t always an intentional decision. Many say they simply stopped going to school one day and no one objected. Some youth may drop out because they have problems with teachers, dislike school, or receive low grades. Other youth, however, leave school because of problems not directly related to academics, such as financial needs, family caretaking responsibilities, employment, or pregnancy. Others drop out because they think that principals or teachers wanted them to (Dynarski & Gleason, 1999; National Center on Secondary Education and Transition, 2004; Williams Bost, 2004).

So it’s more an insidious lack of encouragement and support that is hurting them.These are kids. They don’t think quite like adults. If you see somebody who is having trouble, give them a little. A little what, I can’t say. But it sure sounds like these at-risk people are just adrift. It’s easier to pull yourself up by the bootstraps if they’re attached to a good education.