I agree. I suspect the problem is these children were disruptive at age 8 and no one did anything.

I don't think letting a 12 year old decide they don't have to go to school is the answer. But I do think they should not be allowed to disrupt the education of others.

There are some intereting alternative schools that may be a way to tackle the issue. It's not an easy problem.

With that said, I think what this essay addresses, while seemingly obvious, is one of the biggest problems we face, and education reform generally doesn't mention it.

And I do speculate it hides one of the reasons why places like Promise Academy do so well. The students, even from broken homes, who go there are strongly pushed by mothers (or grandmothers) that this is special place. The expectation of good behavior is much higher there.

None of the students at Promise Academy have supportive fathers or grandfathers?

For a poor black child to have a father in the home is currently atypical: http://www.theroot.com/buzz/72-percent-african-american-chil...

As an addendum, that's an issue of the parents failing, not the school. The primary responsibility for a child's welfare should fall to the parents, not the schools. Schools are secondary. If schools take the primary initiative, there's even more incentive for parents who are on the decision margin to offload that responsibility to the schools and instead focus on other (potentially, but not necessarily, more selfish) things.

Children will attend regardless of truancy laws. See Mary Ruwart easy answers (http://server.theadvocates.org/ruwart/questions_maint.php?Ca...).

"... In the early 1800s, a survey in Boston found that 90% of the school-age children were enrolled, even though attendance was not compulsory and public schooling was not widespread. (3) At that time, the U.S. was considered the most literate nation in the world! We learned more when we weren't forced to do so!"

Before you post a rebuttal, please read the link I've given. It has answers to six related questions in this area, so your questions may already have been answered.

You submit this as if mandatory truency laws will help them change between the ages of 12 and 25. The parent comment was making the point that if we're looking at a child whose parents and peer group don't care then they shouldn't be allowed to negatively affect the rest of the classroom.

With parental involvement and peer group being such an enormous pressure on kids, taking away 1 of the 2 toxic influencers can do wonders for the other 75-85% of the kids.

If universal education was intended to solve these kinds of problems, it seems to me it has obviously failed. I strongly believe that social ills of this sort are FAR better addressed by trying to eliminate poverty than by trying to force kids to attend classes they are getting nothing out of.

That being said, universal education can certainly be seen as an attempt to eliminate poverty. The problem is that the cause of learning is not being advanced, for the majority of students, by forcing kids who don't want to be there to keep coming. All many kids are learning from this experience is to hate learning and to associate it with painful experiences. The ones who don't want to be there resent their teachers, and the ones who want to be there resent their classmates.

It seems likely to me, then, that we are making it more difficult to escape poverty, not less, by forcing school attendance on every student. Though the analogy can only be taken so far, I can't help but think of a lifeboat onto which everyone is fleeing as a ship sinks. Will we try to force everyone onto the lifeboat, in the name of egalitarian principles, even if that means that the lifeboat sinks and no one survives?

A false dichotomy and a broken analogy walk into a bar...

The choice isn't between universal access to education and easier expulsion. We need to find a better way to deal with the problem kids, and to improve our education system in general.

I understand that the analogy is seductive for you because it leads to a "throw them overboard" proclamation on utilitarian grounds. But it glosses over a facet of the school system -- it's not a logical necessity that failures are required for successes.

The purpose of universal education is to educate, not to provide free day care, much less to serve as a corrective institution for young people with behavior problems. Our education system is a failure because it is overburdened with non-educational mandates. In my very biased opinion, it is the most motivated students who are harmed the most by this. The difficult challenge of improving the behavior and attitude of angry and undisciplined individuals is not a goal the public schools should be given.

It very much is part of the purpose of our public education system to "serve as a corrective institution" for the behavioral problems of young people. A key reason we provide education is to ensure that children grow up to be contributors to society. It's folly to think that students that can't contribute despite public education would contribute without it.

The purpose of public education was child care and to teach children - especially countryside children - the idea of turning up at work on time every day, sitting quietly and doing as they were told.

It was a big problem in the industrial revolution - trying to get people to understand that they had to turn up at the same time in the summer and winter - which was a big change if you had been used to getting up with the sun for the previous 2000 years

I wouldn't want to see truancy laws abolished, but in many cases they have little effect.

Perhaps, from a certain age, a choice is given ; attend school, and don't disrupt, or end up in some type of system which is far less free than the school system. I'm thinking some type of national service system, in which the kids are away from their home during the week, have freedoms restricted (as in freedom to do what they want after hours) and have extra (skill gaining) tasks to complete outside of regular schooling. The service could be anything from national parks management to military service, at the students choice upon enrolment. The idea would be to locate them away from family, friends and influences, and work with people who demand respect and hard work.

There needs to be a credible threat to the bad behaviour. Getting told off, or threatening to contact the parents has no effect if the parents aren't on board.

I agree that you just don't want to release unmotivated kids onto the streets, bored and with no skills and no future. It's not good for society, it's not good for the student.