re: Kids Won't Go to School? You're Going to Jail

leahsmom — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 13:28:36 GMT

I also agree that kids should be in school - and that, for some kids, school might be a place to get a meal they otherwise couldn't have, to take a nap, to be out of the cold - if not to learn. Some of the children in our worst public schools don't have even that, but many in our bad but not worst schools might. But I also have some compassion for parents in poverty, who might not be able to afford (truly) clothes, shoes, and supplies to send a child to school - and a child who might not want to go out of shame, just to take a very limited, easy to empathize with example. Or for parents who have a strong distrust of institutional systems which have let them down and often punished them without compassion and without thought, for most of their lives. Parents in poverty may also not really see that education has a value - it very well might not have had one, in their own lives. Or, to move away from some privileged romanticization of the troubles of those in poverty - some parents might feel their children are safer, even possibly at home unsupervised, than they would be in some of our public schools. And in some cases, I might even agree.

Accountability is important. But I despair at the way we in America tell the poor and the struggling - hey, you're on your own, be ACCOUNTABLE FOR YOUR FAILURE, from a young age - when we deprive them of every chance to make a good start that the comfortable (and often, the white) have without thinking about it. I think the situation is far more complex than lazy parents not caring about kids.

re: Kids Won't Go to School? You're Going to Jail

paanta — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 19:17:30 GMT

Yay! Nothing helps troubled kids like locking up their parents!