I didn't prepare for college in high school but I went anyway.
Fear of the unknown is a pretty good excuse. How much do you think we should be paying for someone who's afraid to leave their comfort zone?
Same here. But then again if you've been brought up in poverty, and you haven't been told to do studying and it doesn't come easy to you in a system which really only targets one type of student learning, then are you going to continue to bang your head against the table or are you going to go do something else?
It's not looking for excuses. It's looking for reasons WHY things happen and then acting in an intelligent manner to stop these things from happen.
I'd bet that most kids in run down inner city schools, especially boys, are being taught wrong. They're getting the one size fits all education, here, sit down and write this and then when you're bad at it I'm going to tell you that you're bad at it and you'll fail all your exams and hate education by the time you're 12 years old.
Where's the excuse in the state running schools like that? Really? There isn't an excuse, it's just bad performance from the teaching profession.
Where's the help for kids who don't have family support at home?
Let's put it this way. I've seen good schools in bad areas in other countries. I've seen situations where kids have been told off for being late. They were asked why and the answer was "I had to take my younger brother and sister to primary school", someone rang up the parents "Hey, can you wake your kid up earlier so he can take his siblings to school and get to school on time?" The response "No" or something like that.
So what happened? Was the kid just abandoned? No. The person in charge of the year group rang the boy up EVERY DAY to wake him up because the parents wouldn't. Why? Because they knew there were two choices. One, let the boy rot because he was unfortunate to be born to a bunch of druggies or whatever they were, or two, try and help him to reach his potential.
I've seen schools where kids are sent off to do training which is more suited to them than academic learning. I've seen schools which tailor their education to the sort of things the kids want to do in the future.
I've seen schools that really work, and I've seen the energy required to make this happen. It requires a lot of money to pay people what they're worth, move the right people into the right places. And yes, it does happen in the US, but I suspect it's more a minority than anything else, especially where it's really needed, in inner city areas.
And I've just spoke of education.
You want to blame the kids for trying to grow up their way? Why not blame the politicians who have messed up education, those who haven't bothered to make sure it really works?