"I started keeping a copy for myself, so I had no problems, you know..."

It's, "Yunowha'm sayin'", mom.

Tatsuma

I'm a libertarian... This makes me want to vomit. America, what happened to you?

The ideals of the Enlightenment, on which America was founded, have been forgotten by most of the people and replaced with either some form of Christianity or some watered-down form of socialism. That's what happened to America: the people turned their backs on her.

So far this semester he has been absent NINE TIMES.

Nine times? NINE TIMES...

I've got the solution.

Once the parents are contacted, they have to bring their child TO SCHOOL, (early, everyday for a set-number of days), and walk the student inside to an awaiting detention room. They sign their child in, and from then on, it's NOT THEIR PROBLEM anymore. It's the school's. If the child leaves the property or skips class, ARREST THE STUDENT, not the parent.

There should be a police officer in there, that will tell each student that if they don't go to each class, they will be arrested. If they are having trouble with the class, tutoring can be arranged. If they are having trouble with a fellow student (bullying/harassment), the police officer needs to know. If the student is having trouble at home, the officer needs to know too.

Solutions. Not putting parents in jail. That doesn't make the kid go to school, nor does it get down to the root of the problem.

Not sure why this is so interesting. We do this all the time for habitually truant kids in the district I work in. And by "all the time" I mean "we've got 14,000 students in the district, so even 0.5% (.0005) is still about one a month".

I blame PETA.

SchlingFo Now they're unemployed and they have to find another job ASAP to make sure they don't get evicted/lose their house/get utilities shut off.

...Or miss their mortgage/escrow payment, which leads to them not making protection payments (oh, sorry, "taxes") to their benevolent overseers in city hall who threw them in jail in the first place...For their own good of course.

System bluescreened. Please reboot.

I'm kind of split on this issue. A diploma or GED is the bare minimum you need to get a decent job, but if the kids don't want to deal with it, they can sleep on park benches and beg for change for the rest of their lives.

Surplus population.

clancifer,

When I was in high school, I'd routinely take days off.

The material taught is ridiculously easy; you didn't need to attend school to learn it.

My mom's only requirement was that I let her know when I was taking a day off so she could either call in for me or not be surprised when they called her at work.

I see nothing wrong with it.

As an aside, my principal threatened to fail me my senior year of high school because I missed so many days (never mind the fact that I was passing all of my classes).

I told her that if I was made to repeat senior year that I'd do my best to make the experience a living hell for everyone involved. Yes, I was a ballsy, arrogant little prick, but they graduated me :)

If not for public schools, inner city children would have 0 education and it'd be like Escape From New York in there.

When you are dealing with younger children missing school, I can see holding the parents responsible.

But for the older high school aged kids. I don't know folks. What about holding the kid accountable? Make it a choice...Either you are in school or in jail.

TCannon:

I'd rather have the system arrested. Those kids are gonna learn squat whether they go through the public education system or not.

Agreed. Not like the system is doing them any favors by continually lowering the "passing" standards in response to increased failures...


is_truth: This has been the worst use of the Hero tag...ever

Agreed....

Thirteen:

Yeah, they're doing this here in Michigan too. Kids dont go to school, parents go to jail. Kids still don't go to school, because their parents arn't around to wake them up.

Sounds like a good way to get back at your parents ;)

DrBreRuthlessVillain: For their own good of course.

Don't you mean, "For the children...."?

SchlingFo:

As an aside, my principal threatened to fail me my senior year of high school because I missed so many days (never mind the fact that I was passing all of my classes).

Were you doing well or just passing? If it was anything like my school a copy of the syllabus and a book would let you easily pass any class without knowing where the school is.

I don't remember him being absent nine times.

I doubt that the money spend on this will be less than the money gained through fines....and if you think parents should get off scot free for raising little bastards there is something wrong with you, or you have raised a little bastard and don't want to be accountable. Public school is bad, but it's better than nothing at all.

DrBreRuthlessVillain

Was sorta being sarcastic.

Though the way things work here in Adrian(rounds about an hour south of detroit), you can miss 5 days per 9 weeks. If you miss more(for ANY reason), you get a NG(no grade) for the quarter. If you get a NG for both quarters(per semester), you fail that class automaticly(dispite your grades). However, if you miss 3 or less days per semester(18 weeks), you have the opporunity to exempt from any classes exam that you have a B- or higher in.

It's a very nice system IMO. I myself have exempted from about 6 exams total since they started this, and it's a nice reward for having halfway decent grades and attendence. I think its actually working too. I know a lot of people that would skip constantly before they put this in, and afterwords, though they still miss the 5 days, they're there for the rest.

A few teachers have gotten around this, renaming the exam to something else, and not doing it on the set exam days, so the students could *not* exempt.

I also have at home an article written a while back about 'stupid learning'. It sort of bashes on the current public education system and its flaws, and also proposes a new way of teaching. I doubt it will ever be taken into consideration for a nation-wide, but its something to mill over. I'll post it here in a few hours.

zena: What about holding the kid accountable? Make it a choice...Either you are in school or in jail.

Some choice. What's the difference?

Attn: Grammar Nazis

The parents were lead away in handcuffs Monday morning...

Shouldn't it be 'led' away?
Wasn't there a time when grammatical/spelling errors were nearly non-existant in print?

/becoming a grammar nazi
//my grammar isn't good enough to support this
///skill level is relative, I guess

2005-02-08 09:56:39 AM Animatronik

"Before I clicked on this thread I knew there would be a comment like this. Grow up. They aren't going to jail. These are people who didn't respond when the school district asked them to explain their childrens' absences."

Get over yourself, Kreskin. They are being arrested because the government doesn't approve of their parenting. They have no real obligation to explain anything. I can't understand why anyone would support arresting someone for somebody else's actions. The only reason public schools even care about truancy is because there is something in it for them. State aid is based on attendance a lot of the time.

SchlingFo: DrBreRuthlessVillain: For their own good of course.

Don't you mean, "For the children...."?

Yes, of course. :-)

louiedog,

I did well in some classes, and just passed others.

The way I saw it, though, was that they set the minimum standard for passing at 70%. If they wanted the minimum standard for passing to be 70% and being present for a certain number of days, they should have written that into the rules.

I think the better punishment would be to put the parents in a teaching role for A DAY (minimum Kindergarden), with the room full of mirrors...just so they can see themselves try and "teach" little kids things they know nothing about.

"Ms. 'piece-of-shiat-parent', what's 4 + 15?"

"Hell, I don no...I gots me a button that does my maths for me!"

Great, parents can be arrested if kids decide to skip class. wonderful.

didn't RTA, but my statement still stands.

Orwellian.

Expect such violations of personal 'rights' to continue to escalate.

Serve the machine or be consumed by it!

(and keep watching your TV)

We have this here in Queensland, Australia, but the Education Department gives parents about five warnings prior to legal action being taken. And it is excessive non-attendance before the age of 15 - one case I saw was the child attending for three days out of the entire term, with no medical or other reason behind it.

"Some choice. What's the difference?"

Very true. But I have teenagers. They like going to school to see their friends if for no other reason. I have never had a problem getting my kids to go to school. But if I did, I am sure the threat of jail would scare the crap out of them. Fear can be a very powerful motivator.

I know it is not the 50's anymore but Jesus Horatio Christ, people! I turned out OK by having my ass kicked by my father. We take spankings out of the schools and out of the homes and look what has happened. We are raising children that have no fear of authority and act surprised when they pull out AK-47s in high school and start poppin' caps. Bring back the paddle and these "problems" will fade away. I am in no way advocating child abuse, mind you, just a good ol' fashioned ass whoppin'. Sure, there will be the few kids who are victims of a severe beating, but would you rather have a few kids that get bruises or a majority of kids with their pants strung below their underpants, kids that don't listen to ANYONE, kids that wont graduate, kids who have role models like Eminem and Kids that will be a burden on us in the future as we pay to have them housed (jail). I say whip 'em now while we still can.

Fear, people. That is what is missing. Just like if we remove the fear of God our society will crumble. Remove fear from our children and you get what we now have. Enjoy!

am i the only one who thinks that news crew at the top looks really lame...

Animatronik:

Good plan assholes. Pull these parents out of their jobs in handcuffs. I'm sure the job will still be there when they get back. Unemployment should make it even easier to raise their kid, right?

I didn't expect to encounter solid real-world logic on fark.
You normally get government-school-indoctrination slogans,
like what follows below:

Ther hero tag is deserved - if we are going to require attendance it has to be enforced on the only responsible people, the parents. Personally, I don't believe in public education the way it is now. I think they should require parents to pay a nominal tuition. That way, the ones who don't care can go their own way and the rest get a better education.

amazing maind of a statist, onw who worships goveernment and believes every whim or opinion of some beaurocrat or politician should be ENFORCED by the police state.

Throw is some logic-twisting paradox, calling for ENFORCEMENT and requirement in the same post as "Personally, I don't believe in public education"
/No wonder this is no longer a free country

Solution: kill the idea of government coercion in our lives,
MANDATORY GOVERNMENT education, and let those who care about children (parents) oversee and (pay for)educate their own youth

Thirteen:

If you get a NG for both quarters(per semester), you fail that class automaticly(dispite your grades).

I absolutely disagree with that.

If a kid can pull off As in all of their classes without going to class (and I knew quite a few people who could do this in high school and college), why make them go to class? More importantly, how can a school justify failing someone who has an extremely strong grasp of the material?

Just like if we remove the fear of God our society will crumble.

Bull.............shiat.

"I say whip 'em now while we still can."

Like I said earlier, fear is a very powerful motivator. But we don't need to use corporal punishment to achieve that. I have five children and we don't spank at all. They are what most people would call well-behaved kids. Sure, they have their moments. However, we have never had any serious issues with any of them. There are plenty of other ways to teach responsibility for actions and consequences for bad choices without spanking.

ForrestRump

Fear, people. That is what is missing. Just like if we remove the fear of God our society will crumble.

If fear is the only thing holding your society together, then your society deserves to crumble.

ForrestRump:

I say whip 'em now while we still can.

The problem is that a little bit of discipline at school isn't going to negate the complete lack of attention/supervision in the home lives of so many of the disruptive students.

When they're allowed to do as they please for 16 hours a day, discipline for a few hours a day in school isn't going to have any kind of real effect. Discipline must be consistent to be effective.

zena: Fear can be a very powerful motivator.

Sure can. It can even be used to start illegal wars.

Before I'm accused of a threadjack, my point is that maybe its not a good thing for politicians and government bureaucrats to have the power to put the fear of Gawd into us. Fear of the government's authority (which, I hope you'll agree, is a far different thing than RESPECT for same) hasn't produced much in the way of positive results--and the country sure isn't getting any more free with this amount of meddling in people's lives.

SchlingFo
I absolutely disagree with that.

If a kid can pull off As in all of their classes without going to class (and I knew quite a few people who could do this in high school and college), why make them go to class? More importantly, how can a school justify failing someone who has an extremely strong grasp of the material?

I understand where your coming from, but honestly, I haven't seen an example of this yet. Its been in effect for about 2-3 years now(can't remember exactly how long), but not once have I heard of somebody with an A in a class, yet failing it because of the 5 day policy. Yes, I have heard of people with C's and D's still failing because of it, but never an A or even a B, actually. The concept is there, it just hasn't happend yet.

Options should be:

1) school until graduation

or

2) work in coal mine or slaughterhouse until 18.

DrBreRuthlessVillain

Before I'm accused of a threadjack, my point is that maybe its not a good thing for politicians and government bureaucrats to have the power to put the fear of Gawd into us.

I'd go further: the government should have no authority whatsoever over any individual until another individual accuses a person of an actual crime like rape, murder, theft, robbery, extortion, blackmail, fraud, etc. The government is supposed to be the servant of the people in the USA, not the ruler.

Thirteen,

Yes, I have heard of people with C's and D's still failing because of it, but never an A or even a B, actually.

Even with that, I'm still leaning towards the fact that they've achieved a passing grade for the course. They've learned the same amount of material that another person who earns a C or D in the class has learned, but they're being failed because they didn't attend class as often as the other person.

If anything, the person who didn't attend class deserves to pass more because they've shown that they have the self-discipline to learn the material on their own. And, self-discipline is one of the most important (and sadly, lacking) things in our society.

ForrestRump
I agree kids have bad role models and they should get some form of punishment for doing bad things. But beatings and paddelings? not really. Kids just need a reality check. Like if you don't go to school you could end up selling your asshole for crack money (i made a funny) or at the very least you could be unhappy and without stable income for the rest of your life. Kids these days are convinced they can be "rap stars" and Gangstars and professional skateboarders and make it rich without any real effort because their "role models" did. We need real heros in our society again. Remember when we were kids we all wanted to be like doctors or vets or firemen or palentologists (i was a nerd ok...) kids these days wanna be thugs....they need better heros they need less mtv and associated stuff.

Programmer Cat

I too endured the public education system but did not have quite the negative experience you seem to have had. I did not, however, rely totally on the public school system for my education, just as you did, and I did so with little or no help from my parents. My point is that public schools are not set up to prepare your kids for Harvard nor is the government using public schools to berainwash your kids. If that were the case we would see much more funding (yes, I'm a LAN Admin working for public schools in MN). My point is too many parents have no clue what their kids are doing in school and more times than not are only concerned that they are in school and not on the streets or in jail. I have no problem sending my kids to public schools but I am involved in what they are learning and I make it a point to further their education outside of school.

/enrollment has to be high in order to maintain funding in public schools because the GOVERNMENT says so

Public Schools may not be the best education, but it helps keep the poor in line. How many inner-city kids would actually go if it weren't illegal to skip school?

And where do you think they'll be when you're at work?

Yeah.

Fark 'em. Life is about choices and a student has the right to fail. If they want to live whatever life they choose instead of trying to get an education then why should a Detroit taxpayer have to foot the bill?

Don't round up kids who disregard their own parents and the law (guess how much they'll do for teachers) and force them to go to school. Teach the ones that bother to show up every day. Give them hope. Show them that someone outside of their home gives a damn about them. Work them into shape and encourage them to make a life for themselves.

Quit hiring career administrators and half-assed politicians to run schools or school districts. Every administrator should teach at least one class a day. Rotate the schedule so that if they aren't teaching then they are managing the school. Let teachers coach. Let coaches teach.

No spoon-feeding either. Show a kid how to study, how to research, how to solve problems, and how to think for themselves and they can do it on their own. I see it happen all the time.

The kids you see running around the malls during the day are homeschoolers.