Education is paramount. Well, next to jet skiing.
Category: Local... News Commentary... Thinking Allowed...
Posted Monday, August 04, 2008 at 11:34 AM [GMT-6]

Update: The school administration has changed its collective mind and will recommend to the board that Labor Day be granted as a holiday after all. I'll be surprised if there's any opposition.

The story above the fold on the front page of today's local newspaper deals with an issue that I believe goes to the heart of many societal problems we face. MISD officials are pleading with parents to not pull their kids out of school on Labor Day, which on this year's school calendar is not a holiday. One official is quoted as saying the administration is mulling over ways to "incentivize" the students and parents.

Incentivize? Well. I admit that this issue causes me to channel my inner Old Fart, but I can recall an era when nothing interfered with being in school. Parents actually teamed with teachers and administrators in enforcing attendance rules, and the idea that a family outing might supersede school was ludicrous. (Granted, we didn't have jet skis, and the rich life lessons they offer.)

How things have changed. My observation is that school attendance is pretty far down on the family list of priorities, especially when it competes with important quality time on the lake or at Six Flags.

Kids are still being taught a lesson, of course, even if they aren't in the classroom. Unfortunately, that lesson is that respect for the educational system and even education itself is not all that important.

As with every issue, there's more than one side to be considered. This increasingly cavalier attitude by parents reflects a growing feeling that the education system has become more of an enhanced daycare system than an institution that prepares kids intellectually for achievement in real life.

I remember more than one occasion when I picked up the Niece and Nephew from school and inquired about their day. "We watched a movie!" I flashed back to my own school movie experiences, with the grainy black and white productions delving the mysteries of photosynthesis, or extolling the wonders of electricity, or laying out in embarrassing detail those pesky personal hygiene concerns that we really weren't concerned about. But they still had a focus on education, however inartfully they went about that task.

So, I withheld judgment about their movie experiences until they said, "we watched Shrek!"

I'm reluctant to extrapolate too much from this, but considering that the kids weren't attending film school, I failed to grasp the educational value of that curriculum.

The other sobering aspect of this issue is the reason that school officials are begging parents to deliver their kids to school on Labor Day: it's all about the money. Government funding is tied to school enrollment and attendance, and if the kids aren't there, neither are the dollars.

I don't blame officials for being concerned about funding, but I'd have felt so much better if in the article, they'd have at least given lip service to the idea that education is critical for individuals and society, and attendance is essential to getting that education.

So, we have families who view school as an annoying disruption in important personal plans, and a system that reduces students to their cash flow generating potential. In this situation, the kids are the big losers, and it doesn't stop there.

As the Prince of Verona put it in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (the non-animated version that inexplicably contains no mention of trolls), "–all are punish'd."