Dropout Blues

I've always wanted to get my research down to two and one-half minutes, and now I have at least a start.

Loved and hated, tired and worn;
People's college, now it's scorned
For presumed dumbed-down excess,
a sort of failure from success.
We've got the "everybody hates them but nobody rethinks high school" blues.

Mention standards, we want more
but our fear of dropouts makes a civil war
between two goals for high schools.
No wonder high schools break our rules.
They've got the "schools can't bear the load of what society wants from them" blues.

Always absent, though action was rare
'til '61 when Conant got scared
and dropouts made the news
and high schools paid their dues.
We had the "everybody feared them but nobody helped the dropout" blues.

The stereotype is still alive
though mostly wrong. It still survives
painting dropouts all as fools--
short-sighted, stubborn mules.
We've got the "we'll believe the wrong thing when it suits us 'cause the label sticks" blues.

We rarely talk of class and race.
We say "delinquent" and efface
complicity in pushing out whom schools don't want.
We've got those "schools are for just anything but democratic access" blues.

To be continued . . .

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