by Ann Major

Created on: January 25, 2008

When I was in Grade 10 I sat beside a guy who was 24. After his introduction to our class, he told everyone he came back to school to get his diploma. Then he proceeded to tell everyone the importance of staying in school and the value of an education.

In those days, if you chose not to go to school, you immediately went to work. If you could not make it in academics, there were" vocational schools" where after Grade 9, you could go there and learn a trade. These days we have work shops within schools to teach car mechanics, cosmetology, cooking, etc. We need to have more of these facilities. Making a kid stay in school until he is eighteen causes rampant truancy and our schools are swamped with those who don't want to be there.

Having been a teacher in a high school for twenty-five years, I saw all sorts of students who were destined not to finish school and their captured presence in the school a big problem. No matter what we did to try to keep them there.

On the part of school administration, their incentive is to keep every student as long as they can, translating into more dollars for the school's coffers. So every body counts. On the side of parents, it sometimes becomes a babysitting job for schools. At least in school they are monitored. If they couldn't control their kids, maybe the schools could inflict some kind of discipline into their child.

On the side of teachers, all we want to do is teach. We want to teach those who want to learn and if they don't, we are supposed to motivate them to learn. Unfortunately, the kind of kid who isn't interested in learning is the kids who does not fit into the tight social fabric of a school.

A kid who does not want to remain in school resists it for various reasons. They may have learning disabilities that are not addressed. They cannot get the proper attention in a class of 25-30 boisterous adolescents. Or, he may be having emotional problems because things are in upheaval at home. He is made to come to school where he can vent his frustrations at the teacher through verbal abuse or sometimes violence. He constantly disrupts the learning process because he doesn't want to be there.

At best, if a student is allowed to leave school for a temporary period to see what the outside world is like, he may have a chance to return. But his return has to be assisted because already he has missed out on time with his peers. This also will work towards failure because he is no longer with his age group. However, he can

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