Abstract
The focus of this article is students dropping out of the educational system. According to official statistics about 20% of all students dropped out of vocational schools in the small Eastern European country of Estonia in 2012/13. The same issue is apparent in Estonian universities: in 2012/13, 17% of students left before graduating. The result is an increased number of less educated people in a society, which is, among other problems, considered to be a security risk in the country. A possible reason for this problematic process might be the cultural conflicts in the context of communication. Anthropologist E.T. Hall divided cultures according to their ways of communicating in high-context (much of the information is implicit) and low-context cultures (nearly everything is explicit). If the norms of youngsters’ ways of communication do not fit into the norms of educational institutions, meaning low- and high-context communication, one possible result is dropping out. The research method adopted for this article was a content analysis of the report on reasons for dropping out. According to this, the style of communication in society is important – especially in the context of education.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.