FILM YOUR ISSUE - 2008: High School Drop-Out

Multii-award winner for 2008 Film Your Issue is High School Drop-Out by Guatemalan-American college student Ian Rojas, then 19, who contrasts American youths taking education for granted with a young boy in his native Guatemala who cleans car windshields to support his family and dreams of going to school.




High School Drop-Out won the MySpace Impact Audience Award, The Bill and Melinda Gates/ Strong American Schools Award, and Associated Press Award.

My life completely changed after I moved from Guatemala to South Carolina at 17 years old. I managed to become fluent in English in 4 months before starting high school. After my junior year, I couldn't understand why so many of my classmates were dropping out of high school here in the USA. Wanting to do something about this matter, I created this short film.

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• High School Drop Out
• education
• film your issue
• what's your issue

[DesireeChicago]

In response to this video, yes you are right that many youths in the USA do take school for granted, by means of bitching and whining about going there and they do this by the time they hit 9th grade, so that they can be with the popular crowd, while the 3rd world children would do anything to go to school.

[Kiljan137]

I dropped out this February and I really don't think that dropping out of high school and kids washing cars in the street are related at all. Your education is your business, their education is theirs. We were born with all these "privileges", and I acknowledge that, but not all kids on the street go to school or want to go to school, and its the same for American highschoolers. We can't be grateful for things we don't want just because others don't have it.

[Titanium640]

Or a GED.

[davidleamanmiller]

That is true in a very select few group of people. The reality is, most people need at least a high school diploma to land any kind of job,

[Titanium640]

Not everyone that goes through with high school or even college become successful.

To say that drop outs are terrible in life is a stereotypical reply.

If you were a drop-out, you can break from that misunderstanding by banking on an interests of yours and developing various skills not taught by schools. In some ways you become more intelligent than those at MIT or Yale. And I believe you would adapt more to this unfortunate earth if you lived it rather than read it.

[TheOphron]

The values of this world are twisted. Most people fail to recognize that life itself is an educational experience.

[AccidentalZombie]

I live in South Carolina and I dropped out