Large numbers not engaged in any form of gainful employment areready recruits for a mob throwing stones, burning property, turning a funeral into a riot, or participating in a political demonstration. There never seems to be a shortage of very angry otherwise idle males readily available for some form of protest behavior.Having no prospects for ever being able to support a family creates no-hopers unable to fulfill the male roles their societies expect of them. The most powerful understanding gained from the field of psychology is the formula Frustration=Aggression.Aggression may be expressed against others or against oneself. Thus, a suicide bomber benefits by solving the problem of frustration in both ways.

We cluck in disapproval at the political, business and educational leaders of these countries. How can they be so stupid as to not understand that unemployed, idle males will be a never-ending source of instability to themselves and their societies?Don't they understand that they must provide job opportunities?Don't they see that they must provide training for their population to perform respectable jobs? People in all these 'backward' countries just seem to be on a no exit do loop repeating the same errors again and again. New generations of their unemployed males simply join the existing army of the idle and cause the downfall of their own societies.

When we talk to the leaders of these countries they all offer the same explanation. There are not enough jobs and inadequate resources to provide the training for the jobs that are available. In their wildest dreams these leaders cannot imagine a society like America –a society in which there are sufficient jobs and one-half trillion dollars spent annually on schools. Yet, we fail to prepare our students for the world of work. Indeed, we preserve dysfunctional school districts offering curricula that ensurelarge numbers of our students will drop out and that graduates will lack the skills needed to be employed.

Aggregating the data, we claim to have the lowest total unemployment rate in the industrialized world, approximately 5 percent. Disaggregating the data and considering the status of subgroups provides a different picture. The rate of unemployment among African American males is comparable to the unemployment rates typical of countries such as Algeria, the Philippines, Indonesia and Jordan.

Black male jobless rates in selected American metropolitan areas, 2005

1. Pittsburgh 48.3%
2. Milwaukee 43.1
3.Cleveland 42.7
4. Detroit 42.7
5. Chicago 42.1
6. Buffalo 40.4
7. St. Louis 40.1
8. Philadelphia 39.7
9. Cincinnati 36.3
10.Minneapolis 35.9
<11.Kansas City 34.9
12.Indianapolis 34.4
13.Baltimore 31.6
14.Boston 28.3

Source: Center for Economic Development, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee.

As horrendous as these data are the actual situation is worse. Not all the unemployed in America show up in the statistics. There are discouraged workers who give up trying and 'disappear.' Others simply never collect unemployment insurance and do not appear on any official lists.The unemployed feel no obligation to show up at some government office to fill out paperwork for the purpose of providing more accurate data regarding the unemployment rate. There is no question that the unemployment statistics in the table above areunderestimates. They may be 20,15,10 or 'only' 5 percent higher. What we can be sure of is that the stated rates of African American males unemployed in these cities isnot lower than stated.

My city is second on the unemployment list. Over the last several years I have tried to identify companies in this city that employ high school graduates and have been unable to identify a single one. The businesses, factories and offices hire high school graduates after they have worked a few years and have demonstrated positive work attitudes and greater skills.The only positions available to new high school graduates are part-time and temporary jobs at the minimum hourly wage. For example, part-time or assistant chamber maid or waitress.None of these jobs are full time or connected in any way to a potential career that might eventually include health insurance or any other benefits.Almost all the high school graduates taking these positions are female. At the same time there are numerous unfilled positions in factories for welders and other skilled workers and positions in offices for those with computer skills. thatremain unfilled year after year.As I travel around the country I find a similar situation in other urban areas.

A new study has undertaken a cost-benefit analysis of five leading interventions that have been shown to significantly boost the high school graduation rates for young black males, who are educationally and economically the nation's most at-risk population. The authors find that if the black and white high school graduation rates were equalized so that there were 24,000 new high school graduates each year -- society could save from $3.3 to $4.7 billion for each annual cohort of 20-year-old black males in costs from crime, health care, personal income and state and federal tax revenue. More specifically, the net public benefit at age 20 for each additional black male high school graduate is between $136,000 and $198,000, meaning that for every dollar invested in raising high school completion among this group, there are two to four dollars in public benefits. Ultimately, according to the study by Henry Levin, Clive Belfield, Peter Muennig, and Cecilia Rouse, this is a case in which greater equity produces greater efficiency in the use of public resources. If there is any bias to the calculations, it has been to keep estimates of the benefits conservative so as not to overstate them. Even, so they show that the costs to the nation of failing to ensure high school graduation for black males are

substantial. See http://www.publiceducation.org/pdf/returnstothepublic.pdf

Why haven't the schools developed school to work programs? They have. Programs preparinghigh school students for the world of work began in the first decade after 1900.The theory and practice of cooperative school programs where students attend school and eventually work part time while completing school have been thoroughly developed and successfully demonstrated numerous times in many districts in the last 107 years.

Why aren't the schools implementing school to work programs on a K-12 basis that prepare children and youth for the world of work throughout their school careers? There are at least 2,500 high schools that a recent Johns Hopkins study recently identified as "drop out factories"—schools with long, predictable records of more dropouts than graduates.Instead of using what we know to rescue the students in these schools two strategies have been followed: allow these schools to go on with business as usual and add a cosmetic touch such as an after school or summer remedial skills program, or break them into smaller schools providing inadequate programs for 250 at a time rather than 1,000 students at a time.

In the future,working Americans will have an average of 14 jobs before the age of 38. This is not a sign of failure or lack of commitment. What it reflects is a new paradigm. In place of the old school to work model we are now in an age which can best be described as school to work to school to work to school to work in which people will take continuous upgrading to gain the skills needed to move ahead in careers. In order to participate in this new paradigm high school graduates must be prepared to participate in a school to work program and not drop out or disappear into the shadow economy.

What might be some promising initiatives to help resolve this crisis?There are countless examples of programs that connect schools with businesses and directly involve students in the world of work. Dr. Barry Stern, former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of education under Lamar Alexander, developed via federal and state grants, the Fast Break accelerated learning program in Los Angeles and Michigan. He modeled these efforts on a programdeveloped bya major training centerin Detroit that now boasts a 15-year history of success. Dr. Stern currently has outlined a possible role for the Haberman Foundation http://www.habermanfoundation.org to guide our work into the international communities.http://www.hipie.org

Will Rogers once quipped, "What we don't know doesn't hurt us nearly so much as the things we do know that just ain'tso." Everyone is sure theyknow what a high school is but they just don't work for too many people.

Published September 4, 2007