Is skipping school a simple sign that kids are rejecting public shool programming?

I think there is more going on, personally i think some families are targeted for haressment by the councils etc... and some of the kids i seen at school getting bullied by the teachers, leads tme to beleive there is more going on.

reply to post by ludaChris

This has been a good thread. Lots of thoughtful posts.
king9072, truth_seeker3, vonholland, even Cthulwho. Great observations and ideas.
What's appearing out of this discussion are several different factors, some pushing kids to stay in school and others pulling them away from it.

The only way I know to understand what's going on is to separate the subject of learning from the subject of school.

The first time this idea was presented to me was in the book "Deschooling Society" by Ivan Illich. Illich had a lot of deep points to make in this book, but one of the simpler ones was this distinction: "school" does not necessarily equal "education" or "learning." This is actually quite obvious, right? How did most of us learn the basics of the language we speak? By going to school?

School is a cultural institution. Schools have been used to make slaves and they have also been used for the cause of freedom. A school, if it can be honest enough to state its true purpose, still has the problem of working out how to achieve that purpose with its students. And even if its purpose is quite admirable, it may have difficulty being successful. This is a whole set of subjects: how to make a school effective in achieving its purpose, whatever that might be. There is a lot of data out there on this. I like the edutopia site. But it's just one brighter example.

Then there is the whole question of what an individual wants to achieve and how he or she goes about it. The same observation can be made here: Some people find ways to succeed routinely, while many experience both successes and failures, and others almost never seem to win. What you can ask yourself regarding this is: "Have I ever decided to learn something, and started, but then decided that it was too hard or I just couldn't seem to follow through?" This is a subject that has been studied. Causes for problems in learning have been identified, and technologies have been developed that reduce these problems. Most of the academic world ignores these technologies because they were developed by a non-member. However, that hasn't stopped a lot of teachers from learning how to use them.

I am a student of (among many other subjects) Scientology. Scientology has been rejected by a large portion of the academic and internet community due mostly to a concerted and vicious campaign aimed at discrediting it. However, it continues to have a presence on the web and in society. I invite anyone interested to look into it. Membership is not required to study it, or to find secular applications for it. I personally have found it extremely useful.

Several pros and cons about schooling. There are a lot of students who will never stay in school mainly because the parents are not paying any attention to their attendance, school work, activities and so forth beginning
in primary school. It only gets worse by jr. high and in high school they either drop out or skip continuously.

A long time ago, the teachers were allowed to paddle students who violated school rules. Now, parents sign a form that allows or disallows "corporal punishment" which is one subliminal message that teachers are cruel and unjust.

Then on the other hand, for example at one school, the jr. high boys were without a teacher, left in the school foyer acting up and were made to do pushups on the concrete driveway. It didn't kill them, but why didn't they have a teacher?


Now, school is an institution just as church, prison, orphanage, even marriage and family is an institution. Institutions have policies or rules that are in place to promote cooperate human behavior. When the power to enforce school policies is taken away from school authorities then the students take advantage of the institution. All they can do is flunk and if there is no family support to keep them in school why should they care?

Now, I do agree that many teachers in todays public education system are educated but lack the drive to really teach, because teaching takes more than assigning a chapter and giving a test. A lot of schools are more interested in sports than in classroom academics and a lot of students are bussed out to tech schools and won't receive an academic diploma and as much as teachers gripe for raises, I think they are paid for what they produce. I hope I don't offend anyone, just my opinion.

The failure of students and teachers in education is just another part of the fabric of society that is melting away from social construction. The attitudes toward the education system is headed for mayhem.

Personally, I believe homeschooling is not the answer. Here , the socialization process is averted from students. If they are home schooled, then how do they get alternate points of view from someone other than the parents? How will they fit into society when they have been in a closed institution where they don't learn that one doesn't always get the lead in the school play (get the promotion at the job), they don't have to incorporate anothers ideas into their work pilot project. Is it going to be easy for them to mainstream into society? I don't know, but school is definitately and institution that prepares them for adult life, whether it involves pushups or not.