< PREVIOUS ] [ 1996 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
Sometime during this session, our state legislature will consider a bill that repeals Colorado's mandatory school attendance law.
This inspired some predictable whining from the teachers' unions that this might destroy the public schools.
But other civic functions, even of an educational and uplifting nature, survive without attendance laws. There's no legal requirement for anyone to attend a library, zoo, concert, lecture or museum, and yet these go on. Schools would too.
Further, Colorado has managed before to eliminate things
that seemed necessary but really weren't. We used to have a
state boxing commission. The legislature allowed it to go
out of business, and despite a bit of recent hand-wringing
about bloody unlimited fights,
Colorado has thrived
without a boxing commission.
George H. Kaub of Denver has advised (in a poem, no
less) that we also once employed a state bedding inspector.
Remember those tags on mattresses that said Do not
remove under penalty of law
? The bedding inspector
enforced those laws. We haven't had one since 1991, and I,
for one, haven't slept any the worse for this
deficiency.
We'd probably get along without truant officers, although it would complicate matters for parents.
Currently you can counsel a recalcitrant youngster that
Yes, I know it's truly boring, right up there with
watching nails rust, and that many of your classmates are
snotty and stupid and run in catty cliques, and that some
of your teachers are so dense that they have to cheat to be
remotely competitive at Trivial Pursuit -- but the law
requires you to attend, and we could all go to prison,
which is even worse, if you don't go to school.
Repeal the attendance law, and what can a concerned parent say? I have on occasion told my children that red beets were edible and that Congress is full of wise and just public servants concerned about the welfare of the nation, but that's one thing. It's quite another to state, with a straight face, that school is interesting, provides a wholesome social environment and hires only Mensa material for the teaching staff.
Repeal would continue a trend that makes parenting more
difficult in the United States. Martha has observed that
when I was little, my parents always threatened to sell
me to the Gypsies if I didn't behave, and now you just
don't see bands of Gypsies camped by the river any more.
How are you supposed to get kids to behave?
And when I was older, they were always threatening to
send me to a convent. That's something else you don't see
these days. Just what can you hold over kids'
heads?
If school attendance were no longer mandatory, life would get more difficult for parents. We'd have to devise persuasive reasons for the kids to leave each morning.
Since parental creativity is often at a low ebb before
the third cup of coffee, we'd have to buy books like
Seven Habits & Spiritual Laws of Parents Who Are
Highly Effective at Getting Their Kids to School.
Either that, or the kids might stay around us all day.
I hate to say this, but parents are not a good influence on children. I've been reading about the National Western Stock Show's efforts to prevent scandals this year. Some parents, eager for junior to have a grand champion steer to sell for $50 a pound, hire professional groomers and tenders for the prize livestock. The kid has nothing to do with the critter, and the stock show wants to put an end to this practice.
Something similar happened about 20 years ago with the Soap Box Derby. The vehicles were supposed to be built entirely by children on a $75 budget -- and yet, some of the cars had been tested in wind tunnels, and others contained sophisticated electromagnetic gear for a faster start.
So, leaving children with parents is probably not a good idea, either. We're always trying to give our kids unfair advantages -- I have myself accumulated books while avoiding wealth, with the hope that my children might get scholarships to prestigious universities so that they could then get excellent jobs so that they support me in grand style during my sunset years.
If kids don't have to go to school, and leaving them with parents exposes them to bad influences, what's left? Street life, which no one approves of, and gainful employment, which is illegal on account of child labor laws.
It's surprising that no one in our legislature has explained the benefits of repealing the child-labor laws in conjunction with eliminating the truant officer. It would add to Colorado's low-wage employment pool, and thus make the state more attractive to investment. Further, our tourist industry could draw on about 500,000 more potential bed-makers and burger-flippers.
Eliminating mandatory school attendance might make sense, but only if they also repeal the child-labor laws. Forget Gypsies, convents and other old-fashioned threats -- parents would have no problem getting children to attend school if the only alternative was work.
< PREVIOUS ] [ 1996 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >