E = MC²

Education Equals Music Curriculum Squared

Part I

 

IF YOU ARE A HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT…

 

During the school year*, one high school student will drop out of school every 9 seconds¹.  Since 7,000 US high school students will stop going to school during any one school day², if you drop out, you certainly won’t be alone.

 

*made of 180 seven hour days

 

No, if you drop out of school, the good news is you won’t have to feel outta sync, isolated from those that seem to have something going on, bored, deal with safety issues, or those who don’t seem to see you or sneer at you, or deal anymore with the embarrassment of poor grades, BUT…

 

--Later, when you try to get a job, you are more likely to be out of a job than those kids who finished school³.

               In 2003, only 40% of adults who dropped out of high school had jobs,
               while 60% of those adults who finished high school were working⁸.  
               So, even though you may want to work after you stop going to 
               high school, the circumstances or the need for what you can do may
               prevent you from working and earning money to live.

 

--You are also more likely to earn lower wages than they will^3.

 

 

 For example, from age 18 to age 65, boys/men that graduate from high school will earn (on the average) $7,085 more per year than boys/men that drop out of high school⁴. And you know $7,085 can buy and do a lot of stuff!

 

Also, if you drop out of school you can expect to be earning about 1 cent for every 3 cents the kid who keeps walking those school halls does because in 2004, five years ago, for every $1.00 a high school graduate earned, drop-outs earned only 37 cents⁵.  It's not a pretty picture for you if you don’t finish high school and especially sick when you think you could have finished if …

 

Perhaps, you think that there are a lot of menial, hands-on jobs for drop-outs.  Not so fast there.  In fact, about 90 percent of the fastest growing jobs will actually require high school education plus more training². So, sure, if a drop-out is supposed to be happy at being closed-up in a job that may disappear and for which there are fewer and fewer alternative jobs, then he/she should go for it!  By all means, drop out!

 

However, remember this, when those few jobs for the drop-outs shut down, the drop-outs are more likely than the kids who graduated high school to be on Welfare, Food Stamps, Public Housing, Medicaid,  and other forms of public dependence³.  So, if you like being dependent on others, drop-out and you’ll probably get to rely on others big time through the welfare system.

 

If the money, the job, the things you can’t afford, and standing in line for public assistance isn’t bad enough, WHAT ELSE can happen to drop-outs?

 

Well, high school drop-outs get the honor of being more likely than kids that stayed in school have of the system telling them what to do.  School drop-outs have a greater chance of getting to go to jail or prison and having other people tell them when they can watch TV, shower, eat, talk to a family member and other types of controlled dependence than the kids that saw it through to finish high school.

DID YOU KNOW…

 

--In 1996 and 1997, high school drop-outs made up 69% of our jails, 75% of our state prison inmates and 59% of our federal inmates⁶.

 

Oh, you say, “I’ll drop out of school, but I won’t end up in jail or prison.”   You’ll have to try very hard to avoid the slammer because there are a lot of what used to be high school kids that became high school drop-outs that are behind bars, BECAUSE

 

-- If you drop-out you are 3.5 times more likely to be in prison in some time in your life than a kid that doesn't call it quits and stop going to high school⁷.

 

Do you think you can control the events that happen to you?  The answer is you probably won't be as able to handle what happens to you as you think.  Drop-outs end up in prisons because they can’t get good-paying, long-lasting legal jobs. So, to have money to buy gas, apartment/house rent, food, or clothing for a child a drop-out resorts to illegal ways of getting money, i.e., stealing checks, trafficking drugs, prostitution, burglary, robbery, you name it.

 

If you are a girl and stop going to school, IN ADDITION to the problems above that both boys and girls have, you are more likely than the girl that finishes high school in some form to….

 

A) to find yourself with more than one baby³

B) with no boy around to help you pay for it or take care of it³

C) at an earlier age³. 

It's very hard to get money for food, shelter, and a way to get places for yourself, but it's a real up-hill climb to do this with a baby or babies. If you can do it, you're a better woman than me. I couldn't.  This is why, whatever you do, with a baby or without, it is so important to have what it takes to get a job--a high school education in some form or another.

 

One way to summarize what happens to the 7,000 kids that will drop out of high school today is: these kids will stop coming to breakfast, to safety, and to a future. The 7,000  kids that will drop out today will put themselves, and their baby (if they have one), in bad, dead-end situations, that can deteriorate into desperate conditions. I highly doubt that is what you want for yourself. Right?

 

 

Part I References

 

1  Reimer, M., & Smink, J. (2005). Information about the school dropout issue: Selected facts & statistics. Clemson, SC, : National Dropout Prevention Center/Network. Retrieved April 20, 2007, from http://www.dropoutprevention.org/stats/statDocs/School_Dropout_Facts-2005.pdf

 

 2  Alliance for Excellent Education. (n.d.). The crisis in American high schools. Washington: Author. Retrieved April 20, 2007, from http://www.all4ed.org/whats_at_stake/CrisisInHighSchools.pdf  

 

3  Swanson, C. (2004, December 9). Setting the stage for a national dialogue: Graduation rates and NCLB. Presented at the Alliance for Excellent Education Graduate Rate Symposium, The National Press Club, Washington, DC. Retrieved May 8, 2007, from www.all4ed.org/publications/MeasuringGraduationToMeasureSuccess/ChrisSwansonPowerPoint.ppt  

 

4  Wise, R. (2007, April 24). “NCLB reauthorization: Modernizing middle and high schools for the 21st century.” Testimony presented at the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions  

 

5  Rouse, C. (September, 2005). The labor market consequences of an inadequate education. Prepared for the Equity Symposium on “The Social Costs of Inadequate Education” at Teachers’ College, Columbia University.

Laird, J., DeBell, M., & Chapman, C. (2006, November). Dropout rates in the United States: 2004. Washington: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved April 20, 2007, from http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2007/2007024.pdf

6  http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/ecp.pdf

7  U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. (2002). Correctional populations in the United States, 1998 (NCJ-192929). Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office. Harlow, C.W. (2003). Education and correctional populations. In Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report (NCJ-195670). Washington: Bureau of Justice Statistics. Retrieved April 25, 2007, from http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/ecp.pdf 

 8  Alliance for Excellent Education (2003c, November). FactSheet: The impact of education on: Personal income & employment. Washington, DC: Author

__________________________________________________________________________

Part II

E=MC 2 (Education= Music Curriculum Squared)

 

 

****Music Education is a Complete Education****

 

TAKE a music class

CONNECT with your peers

ACHIEVE high grades

GRADUATE high school

               

Here’s the 411:

Research studies show that if you’re involved in music education classes you are more likely to:

 

(1) Graduate high school ^a

(2) Have better school attendance ^b

 

 

(3) Achieve better grades ^c

(4) Greatly improve your math, reading, and vocabulary skills ^{d, e}

(5) Be considered more socially acceptable and less “disruptive”, defined as frequently skipping classes, in-school suspensions, arrests, and drop-outs ^{f, g}

(6) Increase your independence from gangs and substance abuse ^h

(7) Increase your self-esteem, creative thinking, problem solving and communications skills ^l.

(8) Increase your ability to work with others with greater feelings of camaraderie and fewer episodes of hurtful sarcasm, racism, and fights.^k

 

 

(9) Promote lower relapse rates of undesirable behaviors and help your acquisition of job skills ^{I, j, l}

 

 

The FACTS Of LIFE

 

 

What do we know about dropouts?

 

--One high school student will drop out of school every 9 seconds¹.

 

 

 

--7,000 high school students will drop out of school TODAY².

 

 

 

--In 2003, only 40% of drop-out adults had jobs, while 60% of graduated adults were working⁸.

 

 

 

--Over their working careers, graduates earn $7,085 more each year than working drop-outs⁴.

 

 

 

--In 2004, for each $1 earned by graduates, the working drop-out only earned only $0.37⁵.

 

 

 

--90% of the fastest growing jobs are for graduates with additional training, not for the drop-outs².

 

 

 

--Dropouts are more likely to need public assistance, like food stamps, welfare, Medicaid, and public housing⁵.

 

 

 

--About 70% people going into jails, 75% into state prisons, and 60% into federal prisons are school drop-outs⁶.

 

 

 

--If you are a high school drop-out, you are 3.5 times more likely to go to prison than the kid that graduates⁷.

 

 

 

 

Question: In addition to these pluses, why take a music course in school?

 

 

Answer: Because music helps your brain grow and perform.

Research shows that the brain does not stop growing until somewhere between age 25 and 27^m ; so, if

you are about 16, your brain will grow for another 9 to 11 years.  Feed it!  That doesn’t mean that you should you buy a jug of fertilizer and spray it on your head.  To get your brain to grow, TRY MUSIC.   Music not only brings people together, but it makes people smarter.  

 

Did You Know…?

...Did you know that the planum temporale, which is related to reading, is larger in musicians than non-musicians ⁿ?

 

 

 

 

 

...Did you know the bundle of nerve fibers, the corpus callosum, that connect the two halves of the brain and helps speed information around the brains is thicker in musicians than in non-musicians ^o?

 

...Did you know that musicians get a free high from music because the blood travels through the brain to areas where other stimulations are able to produce feelings of contentment and pleasure and travels away from the brain cell areas that are connected with depression and fear^r?

 

The evidence clearly shows that music helps the brain grow physically and helps it perform other tasks better.

So…FEED YOUR BRAIN WITH A

MUSIC CLASS

 

THE MOST IMPORTANT CORPORATION YOU’LL MEET UP WITH IS

YOUR LIFE

(BE IT’S CEO. IF YOU DON’T HAVE A LIFE TO BE CEO OF, GET ONE! LOL)