Re: the requirement that the state *provide* an education

On Jul 24, 3:57=A0pm, "Stephanie" <h...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

> I do have a sense that helping children with the issues I present would
b=
e better
> done in a separate venue than where education takes place.

But if you're not educating these children then what *are* you doing
with them? Of course you can teach them in a special environment, I
have no probs with that at all, if the community at large are willing
to pay to provide the extra sup****t that's needed to educate problem
kids separately. Otherwise what you have is a dump for disturbed
demotivated kids - a true training ground for prison.

Or if you think they should be working instead, what kind of work do
you think these kids will do if they can't read and write? The kids
with the no-care parents are also the most likely illiterates and
innumerates.

It's not even a good idea for the schools themselves to keep kids out
unless you do something else with them, because if you have local kids
with nothing to do and who have been ejected from the local schools
and have a grudge (or whose parents haven't bothered to send them to
school and therefore have no relation****p with the school) then what
you get is a vandalised school. As some British schools have learned,
to their cost.

In the UK there are some special units for kids whose behaviour
problems can't be handled in mainstream schools, kids who've maybe
been expelled from more than one school. Some of the units are hosted
on sites shared with mainstream schools and the kids transfer as their
behaviour improves. (There aren't enough of them and they don't always
succeed but it's a lot better than nothing.) A lot are in deprived
areas since behaviour problems at school and general social
deprivation do go together. I guess there is more rural deprivation in
the US than the UK (though it exists here too).

There are schools which see themselves as serving the *whole* local
population, not just the nice bits of it. There can be solutions - one
effective answer to kids arriving at school without breakfast is a
breakfast club (and school lunches if parents don't provide). And
there are schools that draw in the parents with adult education and
parent-child literacy projects, because often the underlying problem
is that the *parents* are poorly educated (or illiterate) and are
alienated from school and even scared of it, which affects their kids
very badly. In your rural area, I would imagine it's that kind of
practical community-based approach that's most likely to succeed.

Cailleach