Anti-Truancy Sign
Credit: Kyriaki | ©Wikimedia Commons
Education at Gunpoint - Legal Force a Misguided Way of Ending Truancy
A sheriff can claim success if he captures an escaped convict and returns him to prison; but can an educator claim the same when a truant returns to school? Several area educators, particularly in Saratoga, Fulton and Albany counties, are doing just that.
The Greater Amsterdam School District (Amsterdam, New York), which is planning to emulate Saratoga's anti-truancy program, might want to consider the above question before blindly following the blind. Saratoga County, like many other counties in the Capital District and Mohawk Valley, has turned to its district attorney for help in fighting truancy.
The district attorney warns the parents of truant children. Social workers and other agents of the government often follow up by visiting the family. If that doesn't work, the district attorney threatens the parents with prosecution and finally prosecutes them for educational neglect if all else fails.
No doubt the fear of prosecution will result in more students attending school, but there is a lot more to education than getting children inside the front door of the schoolhouse. Forcing students to go back to school does not mean that they will then get an education.
Some truants who are hunted down and returned to school end up disrupting the classroom. They make it difficult for other students to get an education. Eventually, the same people who compelled the truant to return to school kick him or her out because of bad behavior in school, or the student drops out when he or she is old enough. Other truants return only to be bullied or ostracized by cliques, which is why they left in the first place.
Students, particularly high school students, who are truant or who drop out are often voting with their feet. They are saying that school is not challenging, that they are tired of being made fun of and being bullied, that they are tired of the cliques, that they are tired of teachers who favor popular and wealthy students, that they are tired of teachers who don't seem to care about them — who exit the building faster than they do at the end of the day.
The Greater Amsterdam School District (Amsterdam, New York), which is planning to emulate Saratoga's anti-truancy program, might want to consider the above question before blindly following the blind. Saratoga County, like many other counties in the Capital District and Mohawk Valley, has turned to its district attorney for help in fighting truancy.
The district attorney warns the parents of truant children. Social workers and other agents of the government often follow up by visiting the family. If that doesn't work, the district attorney threatens the parents with prosecution and finally prosecutes them for educational neglect if all else fails.
No doubt the fear of prosecution will result in more students attending school, but there is a lot more to education than getting children inside the front door of the schoolhouse. Forcing students to go back to school does not mean that they will then get an education.
Some truants who are hunted down and returned to school end up disrupting the classroom. They make it difficult for other students to get an education. Eventually, the same people who compelled the truant to return to school kick him or her out because of bad behavior in school, or the student drops out when he or she is old enough. Other truants return only to be bullied or ostracized by cliques, which is why they left in the first place.
Students, particularly high school students, who are truant or who drop out are often voting with their feet. They are saying that school is not challenging, that they are tired of being made fun of and being bullied, that they are tired of the cliques, that they are tired of teachers who favor popular and wealthy students, that they are tired of teachers who don't seem to care about them — who exit the building faster than they do at the end of the day.
Comments
Chet Jezierski
(Guest)
(Guest)
03/03/2009
(Continued from my last comment as I must have hit a word limit and was cut off.)
This has discouraged many young people from working for an education. There are many other factors, of course, but if the level of prosperity that we enjoyed in the 1960s ever returns, I think that alone would greatly improve the situation in our schools.
Chet Jezierski
(Guest)
(Guest)
03/03/2009
I believe that a major reason why young people today don't take education seriously is a breakdown of the work-reward system. Forty years ago, an education guaranteed a good job in one's chosen field. A Bachelor's Degree in engineering, for example, led to the known result of a private office, a secretary, critical decision making for the organization, and upward mobility to senior technical or managerial positions. Even elementary school students observed adults who enjoyed the fruits of their labors and were enticed to follow similar paths to prosperity, promotions and raises. Government advertisements of the day honestly proclaimed, "To get a good job, get a good education." But today, even before this latest recession, people with Master's Degrees and Doctorates have much lower jobs, typing their own correspondence and having upper management overrule their decisions. There is much less reward for the same work input. The carrot is now much further away and maybe even unavailable.
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