Texas truants to be tracked by GPS anklet.

The BBQ Pit
1

Truants to be tracked by GPS anklet.

A 17 year old is an adult, pure and simple. They can make their own decisions. If school isn’t for them, it isn’t for them. Who the hell is the state to say otherwise?

I’m lucky that I live in a state where a 16 year old can legally drop out school.
High school is like prison. Even more so now than when I was in. Every single second is monitored, from the time the bus picks you up in the morning until it drops you off in the afternoon. ID cards fastened to your neck, herded through crowded hallways at the ring of a bell with seconds to spare. Your friends, clothes, speech, and music are closely studied so that you can be corrected when they are found lacking. Various rules come and go at whim, to appease parents or superintendents. No trench coats. No hats. No gum. Girls can’t wear neckties because they present a choking hazard and distract the other kids in class.

And I didn’t even learn anything! All that herding and I didn’t get taught a single thing outside of driver’s ed that I didn’t know before the 9th grade or learn myself in the library.

Education has lost even the charade of priority. Nobody in the administrations care one whit about teaching kids. Fuck learning! Gotta keep them out of gangs. Buckle them up. Keep them on campus. Keep them off drugs. Keep them off the cigarettes, away from alcohol, keep their foot off the pedal. Keep them safe from terrorism. Keep them from having sex. Most of all you have to keep them under control. You have to instill discipline. You have to back up the other teachers’ authority at all times. Because otherwise it’s just anarchy.

Yeah, the government monitoring children’s locations 24/7 is the perfect solution to keeping them in school! :rolleyes: I just can’t wait to send my child into the loving arms of public education!

2

Well, yeah… 95% of these kids are going to go on to lead faceless-slug machine-cog lives. They’ll be happy enough in their punchclock routines, movie nights, bowling leagues, sewing circles, childrearing and all that prole-y stuff.

The remaining 5% will be the scientists and engineers and technicians who keep the machinery of capitalism running smoothly. Since there’s no way to tell for sure who these kids are, the best you can hope for is to keep the schools from becoming a free-fire zone, lest a future inventor gets taken out, bystander-wise.

That’s my theory, anyway.

3

I thought you have to be 18, not 17, to be an adult.

Anyway, my high school wasn’t a prison. I liked it a lot. There was nothing oppressive about it. The OP is painting with a rather wide brush.

4

The age for voluntary removal from HS varies from state to state. The OP has some valid observations, but seem a touch over the top when immersed in the broad generalizations. But hey, it’s the Pit, so fuck it.

5

There is a huge difference between dropping out of school and staying in but just showing up once a week–the latter is a burden on the school as the student tends to be lost and disruptive at best. Even in states that allow kids to drop out on their 16th birthday, an enrolled student who is skipping school is truant.

6

Not in Texas. A 17 year old is a child, with no legal right to make his own decisions.

7

So OP, if you had your way, kids could drop out earlier. OK, say they’re out of school: now what? Get a job? At 16, they probably wouldn’t have any legitimate skills that they could offer an employer. A lot of the union manufacturing jobs that we used to have here have been sent to China, Mexico, etc. and in this economy, even educated people are scrambling to find work. The chances of making a decent living without some education are worse than they used to be.

The thing about dropping out is that it’s quitting. One job applicant finished high school; the other didn’t. If you’re the employer, which do you hire? You may think the one who finished probably didn’t learn much more than the other, or that what he did learn isn’t applicable to the job…but if they seem about the same, the diploma breaks the tie.

One parallel between work and school is that in both cases, you’re asked to do things you don’t want to do. Say a kid hates hates hates math in school. Since he hates it, he figures he doesn’t have to try. When the employer asks the kid to sweep the floor, will he decide that he hates hates hates that too?

Is school really that difficult? Even in my podunk hometown in the 1970s, there were kids who took Basic Math while their classmates took Algebra I. Then they took Algebra IA (a semester of regular Algebra I spread over a year) while others went on to Geometry. Some liked math and continued with Algebra II; I loved math, so I was in Algebra II and Trig (we knocked out Algebra II in nine weeks) while some classmates were taking Algebra IB. It was all stratified so that if the kid was placed correctly, he wasn’t over in his head.

So to me, dropping out isn’t about school being too hard. A great number of kids don’t finish school because it just doesn’t seem very exciting to them. Compared to surfing the net, watching TV, and hanging out with friends, it probably isn’t. My parents would ask if I liked school, but I never had the impression that if I didn’t, they’d let me quit—even though they did, back around 1940. Exciting? Maybe not. Relevant? Definitely.

I learned from seeing them come home dog tired every day after work, knowing that they didn’t get paid nearly enough. I concluded that you can make a living using your back or using your brain. I never doubted which I would prefer. If I had kids, I’d be scared that they’d drop out, find there’s not much exciting, well-paid work available for them, and try living with me for the rest of their lives.

8

The OP is right on the money about the public schools being more prison like then a prison IMO.

My youngest kid was in 9th grade when the School put up a 12 foot chain link fence surrounding the school grounds with a ‘guard’ at the gate and a couple more on the roof .

And the dress code that place came up with was just so stupid and un called for, certain colored shirts could get a kid sent home , certain hair styles were banned, all kinds of BS.
One day I went to the school to pick up my daughter for a doctors appointment and there was a rally in the gym . I was told there was NO WAY they could or would let my daughter out until the rally was over and so I wound up sitting in the outer office waiting area for over 2 hours , a hour and a half past the appointment I may add.
When they finally allowed my daughter out of the gym I was so freakin pissed I told them to call her to the office ,the moron behind that desk questioned my reasons ‘now that there was no chance of making her appointment.’

I finally got the moron to understand I was the parent and legal guardian of the kid and she was shit behind a desk. My kid was called to the office .I ask her where her counselors office was, we walked into that office and I un enrolled my kid out of the public system.

That counselor tried saying ‘I was not allowed’ to un enroll my kid with out a piece of paper from what ever school she would be going to from there.
All to gather it took me over 3 1/2 hours to get my kid out of their ‘custody’.

I put my daughter in a small private school and ’ low and behold !! I’ll be dammed if she didn’t go from C’s and D’s to A’s and B’s with an inclination to learn ,by the second report card or grading period in that private school,

This was back in 1996 in a small town in New Mexico.

9

I dunno, is there a distinction between the graduates who worked hard and wanted to succeed, and the ones who were forced to attend with the threat of incarceration? As a small business owner, I don’t think I’ll be able to fit these “graduates” with a GPS anklet, and I can’t send out truant officers when they decide to take the day off without notice.

Diplomas only mean something, when they actually fucking mean something. The student should have had to at least make some sort of cursory effort to show up and do the work before getting a diploma. Forcing them to be there, then passing them when they hardly know anything because they “need” a diploma to get a job, makes the diploma worthless. All it does is distinguish the fuckup you can push around from the fuckup you can’t.

10

Lots of 16 year olds get jobs where I live today. Work experience gives them skills to offer their next employer, not to mention their hobbies, like fixing cars or welding stuff. Kids with an actual interest in ‘book learning’ will learn it themselves like I did out of libraries and go on to college. In fact, since GED tests are scored by comparison to graduating high schoolers and you have to do better than 2/3 of them to pass, I’d say dropouts with GEDs are a step ahead of the diploma-folks if I’m the one hiring.

You’ve never quit a job before? Yeah, when you hate everything you do there everyday, you quit and find a better job. That’s what you do. You don’t just sit around and accept it because ‘I’m not a quitter’.

We realize that there is a trade-off between security and potential. You can stay at this shitty shitty job that you hate for 30 more years and stay well-fed, or you can quit and risk hunger, but potentially get a much higher paying job that you love. It’s the same in high school. Some kids drop out in order to get on with life, take their chances, learn more, and work hard. Some kids drop out to have more time to spend at home smoking weed and playing Guitar Hero. It isn’t that hard to weed out the latter group in job interviews, even without the trusty signal of a high school diploma.

I agree. For the most part, it is about other things. Like being treated like livestock.

By the way, the ‘17 year olds aren’t legally adults’ crap can stop right now. In addition to high school in general and Texas’s proposed solution to truancy, I’m pitting any and all laws that treat 17 (or even 16) year olds as less than fully adult.

And I realize that all public high schools aren’t shit, just most of them.

11

Huh.

I’m trying to find a cite for this beyond my personal experience, but I remember we were told specifically by our guidance counselor in my tiny Texas school that we could legally drop out/withdraw from high school at 17 and with parents’ permission and approval by the school board at 16 or younger. (Upon checking the TEA site, you can only leave at 17 if you’re in a registered GED program, which considering I graduated at 17… maybe we just weren’t allowed to graduate younger than 16 without permission?)

It doesn’t say how old the kids are in the article, either, but the point that there’s a lot of problems in some public schools is sound. What’s the solution, though? Pour more money into failing schools? But even a poor school can help its students if it has good teachers, and good teachers often won’t go to a failing school, which means all the money poured into it is rather sincerely good money after bad. Close the school, then, and filter the students into neighboring locations? We do that here in Texas and it’s expensive, it’s a huge shake-up for the students and the teachers, it overcrowds the schools, kids get bussed all across town, friendships get cast across the city, and so on. How about private school vouchers? There’s few non-religious private schools, and even though I’m a Christian I’d prefer to do my own indoctrination; admittedly, the Catholic school I spent a year at was just fine in many ways and I rather liked the nuns, but because they lack public funding these schools often don’t have nonessential programs like home economics, shop, or theater. Plus, they’re not necessarily the best choice if you want to get away from your kids being treated like prison inmates.

We can also just drag things back like the OP is suggesting: schools should just be places of book knowledge, educating students in math and science and leaving the other stuff, the necessity of controlling their behavior, to the parents. And that works great in theory, but that’s assuming the parents are teaching any sort of decent behavior at all – and by decent, I show ‘not having sex in the lunchroom’ as an example. For the undisciplined mob, the children who never learned the word ‘no’ up until now, someone needs to step in. Schoolteachers? It isn’t their job. Counselors? They can’t enforce anything, have few tools at their disposal, generally aren’t well trained for this, and there aren’t enough of them per school. Child protective services? Unless the kid is in severe danger for his or her life, they generally won’t take the kid out of the house. Their workloads are pretty tight without taking on every kid who sasses back to his teacher because his mother crumples like wet tissue. The police? Tempting, but probably a little overboard.

The whole point of public schools was to ensure a decent education to everyone in the country regardless of their family’s income. Should we abandon this because it’s too difficult to maintain?

12

You’re a fucking moron. Actually, you’re probably a fucking moron with a GED.

13

Hear hear! Any law that prevents me from getting a 16 year old girl drunk and sexed up is facism. FACISM, I tells you!

14

Yep. :smiley:

I went from the bottom of my high school class to scoring in the 99th percentile on the GED. Now I’m an (inactive) non-commissioned officer in the US Army finishing up my Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. How many high school graduates worked hard enough to not only get a free ride to college, but get paid to attend?

“Fucking moron” indeed.

No, we should maintain it by actually focusing on childrens’ education, instead of their clothing and behavior. For the most part, parents should be able to raise their kids however they want and teachers and the justice system should just accept it.

15

A fucking lot of them. Getting a scholarship doesn’t make you special or notable in the grand scheme of things. Millions of kids get scholarships every year.

But congratulations anyway. How many of your fellow GED holders can see the same thing? My guess is not very many. You being a successful exception does not mean that other kids aren’t complete fuckwits.

16

Riiiight.

See, my problem with that was that I actually went to school to learn things. Lots of kids just went because they had to. And while I don’t think anyone should be forced by the government to go to school – on that we may agree – I don’t agree that schools should be a discipline-free zone. Some rules are BS, but some are necessary, and putting up with BS rules is a good skill to learn.

By your statement, the students actually in school to learn (I promise they exist) should be at the mercy of the people who don’t care.

17

Fuckwits are always going to be fuckwits. How is a high school diploma awarded for good attendance and general sheepiness going to change that? It has been my experience that GED holders are on average smarter and harder-working than their diplomaed counterparts. They are also a little more free-thinking.

But go ahead and insist that showing up to school and refraining from wearing hats for four straight years is a great way to guarantee success in life.

No, they should get to learn, instead of being forced into pep rallies and detention. The ones who don’t care should be given every opportunity to learn. If they really don’t want to learn, don’t force them; just get rid of them. If a kid won’t learn, he really shouldn’t be the education system’s problem anymore.

18

Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit.

High school diplomas are not awarded for “good attendance and general sheepiness” and if you think they are then no wonder you dropped out. No doubt school was getting in the way of your band and underage boozing. It’s probably better that you dropped out. That’ll show all of us who worked hard for good grades and knowledge that we’re not really working hard.

I will admit that a friend of mine has a GED and he’s very smart and very hard working. But he is the exception. Other GED holders I’ve met are not smart and hard working. Most of them seemed to have trouble finding their ass with their hands.

And free thinking? Please. That doesn’t even deserve a response.

Sucks to be you, my high school allowed us to wear hats in class. I guess my knowledge must be through the roof because I was allowed to wear a hat while teachers taught me.

19

Please put down the broad brush. There are many reasons for getting a GED, I got mine because I was homeschooled. (We were not in a program that could give a valid diploma) I’m glad my employers didn’t show the same prejudice against GED’s that you seem to have.

20

Shit, I got paid to get my MS.