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Compulsory School Attendance Issues

Neeva has been begging to go to public school for months, so back in August we set a goal, which she reached, and her prize was to attend the local elementary school. Her sister Mara decided she wanted to attend too. They both started today.

One of them brought home a newsletter, published by some outside third party, this afternoon. In the newsletter was a Q&A section with a question about whether it would be okay for children to miss a few days of school around the holidays if the family was visiting and didn't get back in time. The answer given, of course, was that the school would not excuse the absence and that the child needed to be in school when school was insession. It gave the standard reasoning for maximizing attendance: falling behind on classwork, etc.

I'm not so sure I agree with this reasoning. Oliver van de Mille, author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the Twenty-first Century describes three types of education: what he calls the "conveyor belt" education, the "professional" education, and a "leadership" education. Although any one of the three can occur in any school setting, each seems to occur predominantly in specific settings. Most public schools, according to de Mille, produce a conveyor belt education, which he describes as designed to produce basic education for the masses in a factory like setting and way. According to de Mille, about 10% of this education is curriculum and about 90% is "socialization." By socialization, he means the content of the curriculum is designed to teach the child how to interact with others in the approved ways; what a former neighbor of mine described as "learning how to stand in the lunch line." If this is an accurate assessment, then missing a few days should not seriously impact the child's development.

Where the reasoning that the child needs to be in school whenever school is in session falls down comes when we look at the statistics accumulated by Dr. Thomas Stanley, Ph.D. over a 25 year period of studying the affluent in America, and published in his books The Millionaire Next Door
and The Millionaire Mind. Stanley's findings indicate that for the majority of American self-made millionaires, grades or graduation rank in school, high IQ or prestigous colleges aren't considered significant factors in achieving success. (The exception to this rule is for physicians and attorneys. These individuals receive what de Mille calls a professional education, but even so, for them to become what Stanley calls "balance sheet affluent" requires something that sets them apart from all of the non-millionaire doctors and lawyers.) The majority of millionaire's surveyed said that their integrity, discipline, and leadership skills were the dominant factors in their success. They also indicated that finding the right vocational niche and seeing opportunities that others didn't see (or wouldn't follow through on) were more significant success factors.

My experience has been that when the child/student sees value in pursuing a subject, seat time in a class room can actually slow her down. Mara's love of history and science are probably going to be significantly hampered by being in a classroom with 30 other kids and having to move at their pace. On the other hand, when the child isn't interested in the subject matter, or doesn't see the value in it, then seat time becomes irrelevant; we're just boring the poor kid. Unfortunately, the process of sticking 30 kids in a room and telling them "you have to learn this," then forcing them to work at the pace set by the teacher can kill the interest for a lot of children.
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