Schooling

[Coobeastie]

Did anybody hear the news clip yesterday afternoon on radio 4 regarding truancy....excuses ranged from you have to get up early to the da techers don understan me....(sorry trying to put a but of inflection on that last bit).

It seems far to easy to flunk school and live of the state...what's gone wrong with society?

[kempie]

I would suggest that it is very difficult to flunk school, what with the powers-that-be falling over themselves to ensure that everybody gets a pass at GCSE.

[Piper-AK]

Location chips that issue electric shocks, that's the answer. 

Oh, sorry, mind burped there......

[ICEMANSAV]

Thing is though truancy has been around for ages, my mum did it, I did it and I am sure my grandparents did it in the day. It is just more reported and focused on by the media due to the popular blame of yob culture, being attributed to schooling etc. I personally blame parenting, not schooling and agree with the punishment being handed out to parents of the " yob " but honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress - Gandhi

[bazwillrun]

At the end of the day a small proportion of truants can probably be sorted out but the vast majority are a bunch of wasters and having them back into school will  just be disruptive to other pupils.

The govt. has only wasted about �750 million trying to "cure" the problem. That worries me more than a load of chavs bunking school Looks like they are the ones who should be back in school.

[hodgey]

I don't think anything in society is that different than it ever has been (grammar?) as icemansav said, kids have always bunked off school, its just that the procedures in place now are more effective at catching truants - therefore it gets reported more and seems worse than it was in say, the 50's, when actually its probably better. So in answer to "what's gone wrong with society?" probably nothing, we just know more about whats wrong these days. Which is a good thing, because we can work towards fixing it. After all, we can hardly get a child back into school if we haven't realised they're bunking off in the first place.

[surfer mike]

Exactly right iceman, we have all, well mostly all of us have played truant in our lives..its the same old story blame this generation.. just like our fathers generation  blamed us for the decline in civilisation and''moral values''  as we know it.. today its all the fault of hoodies and their ilk..complete rubbish...we all need somebody to blame i suppose and the youth usually are the ones who cop it.

[LeMarchand]

Whilst I would agree that truancy has always been with us, it used to be the case that if your parents were told that you had been playing truant, you would get a clip round the ear and sundry other punishments. Nowadays I frequently see children playing truant with their parent(s).

Not to mention taking holidays in term time, which is surely sanctioned truancy?

[delilahcat]

Sorry to disagree with the majority but not only did I never play truant, I can think of hardly anyone else who did when I was at school (throughout the 60s).

Like LeMarchand, I agree that truancy has always taken place but surely not to the extent it is nowadays, with parents dragging their kids round shopping malls when they're supposed to be in school.