Skiving Off School in The UK
If you don't like a particular pop record then you don't listen to The Dark Knight Curse and you don't buy it. If a child of any age decides they will risk the consequences of skiving off from school for a lesson, a day or even longer, then it is blindingly obvious that they do it for what seems to themselves to be a good reason.
If you are not purchasing pop music you hate, does an outside organisation punish you and threaten your family with fines, no that would be stupid. So we have children who are not buying into school, could it be they are hugely lacking in confidence, being bullied, feeling left out and isolated or suffering psychological problems caused by family break ups, should we punish them and fine their families too.
The government have spent more than 1 billion to tackle the problem but it seems most of this has been spent on punishment of children who hate school and punishment of their parents. Are all government ministers really that incompetent. Would it not be far wiser to ask the children why they don't turn up and then see if their fears and problems could be addressed with a view to curing them.
If you break your leg in an accident would you expect to be punished and fined, or taken to a hospital where they could fix you up. Government seems to be a collection of complete buffoons. If they treated children as individual human beings who are not all created perfect and can become damaged, instead of treating the whole population as numbers to be counted by level upon level of useless costly wasteful bean counters, then perhaps it would become very clear, not only to ordinary folk but those who do not live in the real world, that children can have problems that need specific individual attention to heal their psychological wounds.
Schools will never be a one size fits all answer to education but must recognise they are failing big time with truancy and need to address their own institutional problems before they start to attack, punish and fine parents and their broken children. It appears that governments answer to all societies problems is to legislate against, criminalise and punish all who suffer from the failure of parliament by fining them and or taxing them to death.
If you run a business do you throw 10% of all your good stock materials straight into the rubbish skip, no because you would soon be a failed business. So why throw 63,000 children onto the scrap heap because they do not suit conveyor belt education. There is an enormous amount of hidden talent waiting to be tapped in those rejected children as is proved time and time again by people in all walks of life who failed miserably at school but are now at the top of their professions or famous and successful in many other fields.
Children who skive off need special attention teachers and teaching facilities which are attractive to attend and have the right equipment and medicine to treat the minds that have many curable ailments from the simplest to the very severe. If your car gets a puncture you don't scrap the car, fine it and punish it, you fix it. Children are not the problem, interfering government incompetence is the problem.
David Forward davidforward.co.uk" >Malmesbury Memories
Malmesbury's failings in 1963 - Still no change in 2008
Colin's 1963 letter on davidforward.co.uk" >Malmesbury Memories
