Tune in, turn on, drop out. Yeah, that was smart advice.

There's a lot of talk in the education world about what to do about high school dropouts.

This reminds me of the young man who sat across from me in art class in high school. I stunk at art, but I had to take an elective, so....

But I digress.

This guy seemed reasonably intelligent but it was obvious he and school were not on the best of terms. His attendance was pretty good, but he missed enough that it was noticeable.

He was a senior and I was a junior and I envied that about him because I had "junioritis" pretty bad.

We spent months in this class, and some time in late April I noticed that he had been gone several days in a row. I asked another guy nearby what happened to our acquaintance and he casually mentioned that he had dropped out.

He dropped out five weeks shy of graduation.

That guy made a short-term decision to enter society unprepared. Bad idea.

I never found out what became of him, but I bet he didn't get a job at Microsoft. He may be printing license plates, or worse, by now.

The point is, my school did nothing wrong. They provided a decent education and he threw it away.

So just what are schools supposed to do to keep kids from dropping out?

There are lots of technical strategies, and they may have some effect, but nothing, NOTHING can stop a motivated kid who has the legal right to abandon his or her education.

You can raise the age for dropping out, but then you have older kids who have no interest in school disrupting the students who want to be there.

How about sending them to vocational education? Those kids tend to face more difficult academic requirements. (Have you tried to repair a modern car today? It's not for Goober Pyle anymore.)

There are alternative high schools, schools within schools and so on, and so on. But if a kid really and truly wants to go, he will go.

All this to say there are some problems public schools and their tax dollars cannot truly solve. It's a societal and cultural problem. The stigma of being a dropout has eased somewhat and that's a shame.

I've seen an apparently homeless man on a corner near my office three days in a row now. He seems perfectly able-bodied; in fact, his schtick is to juggle and get some spare change for his talent. He could probably get a performing job with that skill, but he just won't for whatever reason.

If you know a kid who's just "juggling" school and wants to take to the streets as soon as possible, tell him about the guy by the freeway who squandered his talent.

Maybe I knew him in art class.