Actually, our local school board is doing something about the problem. It's just all pure foolishness. For instance, my county has a rule that if you miss a certain number of days, you fail. That's it. It doesn't matter if you have a 90+ average. You still fail. If the work is so easy that poor, absent students can still pass, then improve the instruction and increase the requirements. If a student has a problem that necessitates missing school and that student does all make-up work and struggles to keep up, why are we heaping punishment on top of personal difficulty?
Another rule they feel will solve the problems in the public schools involves the dress code. In their infinite wisdom, with 90+ degree days, they decreed that boys could not wear shorts. Never mind that the style for boys is shorts below the knees and that the problems were largely caused by girls. In fact, one board member remarked when they made an exception so that female teachers and girls could wear capri pants (which are, keep in mind, just long shorts or short slacks) that boys could wear shorts when they were called capris.
It is a challenge being a parent today. The world doesn't provide a good environment for raising children. Schools need to work more closely with parents to create a better learning situation. In past years, the answer was to encourage these children to drop out. They could become ditch diggers, janitors, and auto mechanics. Now the ditch diggers operate complicated machinery, the janitors clean using chemicals that could kill if used improperly, and auto mechanics are using computers to diagnosis and repair vehicles that change dramatically from year to year. There's no place to throw the throwaways.
When our school systems were developed, the world was a different place. To be honest, I don't really understand what the world was like in the 1950s because I was born in 1953. I was a product of what was then a new approach to public education. It did a moderately adequate job of preparing me to live in this world. However, even I have to admit that if I had graduated with only the knowledge I received in school, I would not have been as successful. My school system wasn't the best in the world, but it did what it had to do. It is imperative to remember that the world that existed was much less complicated. But even then, the schools were beginning to show their weaknesses.
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