Guatemalan Youth and Education: Family, Environment, and Dropping Out

Guatemalan education, in rural and urban areas throughout the 21st century, has gone through various fluctuations and has been studied by numerous scholars including Adelman Ainsworth, Bassi et. al, Behrman, Crane, Davis, Rogers, Tumen, and Yount who all study different aspects of education including parental investment, neighborhood life, family life, parental migration, poverty and class issues, and other interdisciplinary aspects of these issues. This project focuses on how sociocultural aspects, like family and environment, effect middle and secondary school dropout rates in both rural and urban Guatemala throughout the 21st century for children ages 13 to 18. In this sense, environment can be defined as the area in which children live, the access this area grants them, and the neighborhood mentality that comes along with the area in which children live. It is important to research and discuss these sociocultural aspects like family, including parental investment and examining the local setting where a child is raised and attends school, and how these factors impact the dropout rates of middle and secondary school aged, ages thirteen to eighteen, children. Parental investment is defined as how involved the child’s family and/or parent(s) are in their scholastic progress, the educational level the family and/or parent(s) possess, the resources the family and/or parent(s) have access to in regard to the child or children’s educational success, and how this familial and/or parental involvement factor influences the rate at which a child or children will drop out of middle and secondary schools in both urban and rural areas (Yount et. al,497)