CorvusCamenarum said:
Correct. They are children and so need to be told what to do until they demonstrate they can think act appropriately for themselves.
Telling them what to do would be making them complete high school - by law.
Or we could teach children that everything they will ever do will have consequences and that they should weigh them accordingly. In this context, dropping out of school = no license. Your example of "if you dont let me drive/work, I'll rob a bank" is analagous to a 4 year old threatening to hold their breath until he gets his way/cookie/whatever.
This is an interesting analogy, but i don't think it's applicable. These kids aren't asking anything or threatening anything against society. I am just explaining a cause and effect. Believe me, the consequences of dropping out of high school are already dire enough that telling a drop out he can't drive for another year is probably water under the bridge as far as scaring someone away. I don't htink kids choose to drop out of school to pursue other opportunities. I think they drop out out of despair. This is a very big difference because someone who is in despair is not gonna care about the consequences of his or her actions. Think about it. What could have possible driven
you to drop out of high school?
Farmer Brown Jr. can always get a GED in his spare time. The stock market wonder boy is, as you pointed out earlier, a child, and also as you iterated, incapable of making such a large decision for on his own.
YOu didn't say whether you would allow him to drive. The point of my examples were to provide situations where kids made the "right" choice in dropping out, or at least had a decent excuse. Do these kids deserve to be disciplined? If they don't, then what right does anyone have to decide what is a decent reason to drop out and what isn't?
Again, if you want something, you have to work for it. The sooner people realize there is no free lunch the better. It's an abstract that most people shrug off until it hits close to home.
This is not a question of "free lunch". It is a question of taking away a privilege from kids who drop out - a privilege that would be granted to other kids their age. You are taking away what currently is permitted.
It's a sad situation to be sure, but laying it at society's doorstep won't help. Every one of those kids made the misguided choice not to get up and go to class, and they don't have anyone to blame but themselves for it.
People who are ****ed up are gonna be on society's doorstep no matter what. You ahve two choices, as i said before: try your darndest to be supportive of people so that they can contribute to society, or leave them to the wolves once htey make a poor decision.
Now i'll reuse your cookie analogy in a way that i believe it works - let's say your kid throws a fit and threatens you to hold his breath, etc, and you won't hear anything of it. The kid continues to whine like mad and won't give up on it. You then have two choices: You can sit and talk to the kid about how he feels about the cookie - teach him to express his feelings. This may not be exactly what the kid has earned from you, but it will help the kid mature, and he will learn what he has done wrong. He will also realize, through your patience and energy, that you do care about him, which is probably a big part of why the child chose to be destructive/bratty to begin with.
It is the same situation with a dropout. You can leave him to cry in the corner (and eventually turn away from you), or you can try to support him and talk him through his feelings, and most importantly, show that you care about him and want him to succeed. Tossing the kid to the wolves doesn't accomplish anything. No matter how much he "deserves it".
