Public policy on laws regulating when students are legally required to be in school, and when they can “drop out” is discussed a bit here. It’s a matter which brings up some fundamental questions on what schooling is, and should be, during a time of great development in learning tools, Ed Tech, cloud communication, etc.
Here’s a copy and paste of an email exchange between Gary, who sent the link, and John who replied:
“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink”? -Gary
John responds:
Depends a lot on how one defines “schooling”…
If it’s not a warehouse to keep kids off the street/ babysitting location, and it’s instead about supporting individual and group initiatives for learning, maybe it’s not a matter of jails without bars on the windows. Instead perhaps it’s something more vitally attractive for which coercion is not the “go to” approach.
IOW, if “schooling” is about adapting educational institutions to the needs of the learners, and not the other way around, then the desire should be to “want to be there” instead of “want to get out”. It’s not like we can’t see that certain things attract and motivate people/ teens pretty much across the board.
Theoretically, freedom involves intrinsic motivations to do what society determines are responsible actions. (in practice, such things are very messy)
For example, one reads that many boys are kind of defined in today’s world as defective learners that need to be drugged to “fit in”…. again one needs to question the forms they are being forced into.
Conformity.
How much “variation” on the norm can learning systems/ educational systems accommodate? A heck of a lot more using cloud tools and adaptive learning and DIY collaborative models etc.
OTOH, there’s probably some kids that are too damaged, or bent, for whatever reasons: too much poverty, too much privilege, or the vicissitudes of all the ways things can go wrong in human development… and society has to “handle” that stuff too…
That suggests we would still need ”reform schools”…but even there, where coercion and physical force might need to be included to keep the “past the at risk into the actual destruction”: kids from destroying themselves and others…things could be a LOT different with cloud learning tools also present. And as is frequently pointed out, if those kids can be addressed before the damage is done, it’s a lot better for all concerned.