The Significance of Graduating from High School in the United States
Only a few brief decades ago, the significance of graduating from high school in the United States was of no great importance to many. A female was expected to marry and raise the children and a male would either join the military, go to work in his father's business or maybe go to college, but as time has a way of doing, it changed all this with two unconnected, life-altering events. WWII ended and WWW became a way of life.
Women, who had once been loath to go to work, realized the freedom found in earning their own money and had no desire to return to the status of homemaker only. This alone made the job market more competitive and education was often the deciding factor of who got the jobs.
Then the World Wide Web suddenly shrank the world as technology moved us quickly into a world market where education was necessary to keep ahead of competitors. Parents woke to the fact that for their children to get ahead in the world now required an education of at least twelve years.
Today, even the most menial job often requires a high school diploma. The knowledge may not be required to perform the job, but the fact that a person made a good choice and stuck to it for twelve years to graduate, speaks volumes about potential, character and ethics to an employer hiring from a flooded job market.
The fact that an uneducated employee has far less earning potential that those with a diploma will follow them throughout life unless they earn a GED or return to school. One reason for this is that you gain more in school than just knowledge; you learn problem solving skills, teamwork and how to act in modern society.
Another significance of graduation from high school in the United States is that you can no longer obtain a driver's license, under the age of 18, if you are a dropout from school. This alone has served as an incentive for teens to stay in school and makes the US more competitive in the world market.
The recent decline of the world's economy has brought to light another significance of graduation from high school in the United States. With the thousands of employees laid off from jobs and unable to find another, they have been forced to turn to drawing unemployment benefits only to find that in many states, without a high school diploma they are not eligible to draw.
Education is the ticket to a brighter future for our children and the significance of graduating from high school in the United States cannot be overstated. For years, the US has lagged behind other modern nations in education and is only now beginning to close the gap. Without an educated population, our days as a world leader are numbered.
