If We Don't Prosecute Truancy, Education Won't Be Truly Compulsory
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder argues that compulsory education laws are meaningless without enforcement, and that chronic absenteeism will continue to rise without real consequences for truancy.
Key Takeaways
- Compulsory education requires enforcement - Laws mandating school attendance mean nothing if no one enforces them
- Truancy prosecution has declined - As society has moved away from holding parents accountable, chronic absenteeism has skyrocketed
- Schools can't solve this alone - Without the legal system backing attendance requirements, schools have no leverage
Transcript
I'm worried that education is no longer truly compulsory in the United States.
And if you look at the gains we made in the 20th century, going from a country where almost nobody went to high school to becoming a country where pretty much everybody goes to high school and most people graduate from high school, It's kind of discouraging to look at what's happening now when we're not really enforcing truancy, so a lot of kids are just not going to school at all.
There are a number of US districts where a majority of students, a majority, are chronically absent, meaning they miss more than 18 days a year.
it's hard to say that that's really compulsory education if kids are missing that much if kids are not going and i think we also have a gap in the compulsory aspect of schooling if kids don't actually have to do their work if we're passing kids along they're not doing the work they're not learning anything often that's because they're not there at all i don't think we really want to have the kind of society where millions and millions of people are not getting educated at even a basic level if you look at what society was like last time we had that situation in the early 20th century it was not good.
There were a lot of downsides of not having an educated society.
So I think there are some unpleasant things that we have to deal with here.
Like truancy is not super fun.
Prosecuting families for truancy is not super fun.
But the thing is, when people know you have to send your kids to school, They do it.
When they know you will get prosecuted if you don't send your kids to school, almost everybody sends their kids to school.
Historically, truancy prosecutions have been pretty rare.
They have been pretty rare because people expect them.
They know what will happen.
And now that we've broken that, now that we've kind of stopped prosecuting truancy, in so many places.
I don't know how we're going to get this back unless we do start prosecuting it again.
And that's going to mean higher numbers of like the actual prosecutions that we don't want.
But we have to muster the political will to do this because it is neglect.
Not educating your kids is neglect.
And that's not to say anything against homeschooling or private schools or charter schools or online schools.
virtual schools, whatever, but like you have to educate your kids and we can't act as a society like it doesn't matter if you don't.
We have to ensure that everyone is educated and the compulsory part of education of, you know, like of compulsory education turns out to be really important.
Voluntary education will not get us there if only the kids who feel like it today come to school.
Like the whole value of education doesn't really sink in for a lot of kids as kids.
It's only after we receive an education that we truly appreciate the value of it.
So as adults and as a society, we have to make education compulsory again.
Let me know what you think.