Education Matters: It's graduation from high school - remember?

Soon all Missouri schools will have completed their graduation ceremonies and thousands of our high school seniors will move on to a pretty dramatic adjustment.

Within a period of five years after high school graduation, the young person will on an average have completed his or her formal education, selected an occupation, secured a first job that focuses on that occupation, selected a mate and started a family. These next few years will set a pattern that, for most, will last a lifetime. One can only pray that we as parents, grandparents and the nation's schools have done an adequate job in getting our youth prepared for whatever is next.

I graduated from high school 49 years ago. Of our class of 70 people, 12 started college. The remainder went to work mostly away from our hometown, and did quite well. For most, a high school diploma was enough. In fact, in those days an eighth grade diploma was important. A fairly high percentage of my friends didn't finish high school.

When my parents graduated from the Hartville high school in 1926 a majority of the youth of that day had dropped out after the eighth grade or before and most of them did OK raising and providing a living for their families.

Once in a while someone will lament the differences in the 1926 high school class and the classes of the past decade. They say that the earlier students were superior. They were indeed good students but only those "good in the books" went beyond the eighth grade. In most Missouri schools there was little if any so-called vocational technical education and no special education. The curriculum was college preparatory and those in high school were there because they really wanted to be. This was a select group of young people. Also, there were no laws requiring attendance.

If we will look closely at the top 30 percent of our high school students one will be impressed with their quality. They are superior and are using a curriculum that is miles ahead of that of their great- grandparents, their grandparents and even their parents.

The more advanced high school curriculum available to those choosing to take advantage of it is as difficult and requires as sharp a focus and as much time in study as was true for most college students 50 years ago. I have marveled at the time my older grandchildren spend in serious study. This past weekend, one of my 15-year-old grandsons spent 15 hours studying for his final semester tests. He is finishing the ninth grade. I asked if he enjoyed studying that much. He observed that he enjoyed the results. His older brother is just as fervent. He is a national merit finalist, has never made lower than an A grade and is one of eight valedictorians in a class of 630 at Hickman High School in Columbia. My four Blue Springs grandsons are A students and my Springfield fourth-grade granddaughter loves school, reads at the eighth grade level and makes great grades.

We have such youngsters all over the country. On a whole, they are the best students our country has produced who attend the best publicly supported schools in the history of the world.

Are there students who will not apply themselves in school? Are there students who will act violently against other students and their teachers? Are there students in school who just don't care enough about school to try to avoid trouble and failure?

The answer is yes to all of these questions, but that is another story.

Today, for the graduating class of the year 2000, we have a better story to tell.

(Arthur L. Mallory, EdD, is a former president of Southwest Missouri State University and former commissioner of education who resides in Springfield.)