Reducing the dropout rate is the rationale behind the proposal to increase
the compulsory attendance age to 18, but does a higher compulsory attendance age
result in higher graduation rates? Of the 10 states with the best graduation
rates (based on 2001-2002 data from the National Center for Education
Statistics), only two – Utah (4th) and Wisconsin (7th) – compel attendance to
the age of 18. The rest allow students to leave at 16. Of the 10 states with the
lowest graduation rates, one (New Mexico) mandates attendance to age 18.
Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee are at 17 and the remaining states at 16.
Does it foster high achievement? Of the six countries scoring highest
on the Program for International Student Assessment mathematics exam in 2003,
only one – the Netherlands – requires school attendance to the age of 18. The
others range from age 14 (Korea, Hong Kong, and Macao-China) to 16 (Canada,
Finland, and Liechtenstein). Overseas, less is more.
The proponents of this legislation are claiming it will provide economic
benefits. I’m dubious. It will certainly create jobs, just not the high-tech,
high-skill jobs we are led to believe. Most of the new jobs would be "school"
jobs. Keeping young adults in the system longer will increase student
populations, requiring more teachers, administrators, custodians,
paraprofessionals, bus drivers, textbooks, hot lunches and standardized tests.
In this case it’s not "higher education" that will result in more jobs, but
"bigger education," a more ponderous system that would require additional
funding at a time when the state can’t fulfill its current financial
obligations.
Costliness and lack of efficacy aside, my objections to the state’s reliance
on compulsory attendance are more fundamental and speak to the real challenge
facing our educational system. "There are only two places where time takes
precedence over the job to be done – school and prison," observed psychologist
William Glasser. Government, at both the state and federal levels, has become
increasingly heavy-handed in imposing its agenda on our children, demanding more
and more of their childhood. Children are born indentured servants to the state,
which now wants to extend their sentence in the name of the economy (also note
that recently introduced legislation, Senate Bill 162, would make kindergarten
attendance mandatory for 5-year-olds). As a parent, I’m angry.
As a teacher, I’m appalled. There are few things more rewarding than teaching
students who want to learn and few things more frustrating and pointless than
trying to teach students who have no interest in learning material essentially
force-fed them. Their attitude is understandable when the meal consists of the
watered-down stew of Michigan’s one-size-fits-none
"grade-level-content-expectations." The old saw, "You can lead a horse to
water…" has been revised for the new millennium. It’s now, "Drag the horse to
water, and then push his head under because drowning looks like drinking from a
distance."
Perhaps the attraction of raising the attendance age to 18 is that it
relieves educrats of the thoughtful effort necessary to actually examine why
students are dropping out of school and to craft equally thoughtful and creative
solutions. Mandatory attendance is the legislative equivalent of the weak trump
card parents play when trying to coerce obedience from children: "Because I said
so!"
The proposal to extend compulsory attendance to age 18 is a sham, floated
only because of an absence of any better ideas, much like the recently imposed
"tougher" graduation requirements: Forcing all students to take Algebra 2
certainly sounds rigorous. It looks like you’re doing something substantive, but
it’s a great sound and fury signifying nothing.
High achievement is not the result of more seat time. It is the product of
students’ complete engagement in a discipline they find relevant and valuable,
and there is no better way to extinguish the innate joy of learning than by
relying on coercion. Plato understood that when he wrote, "Knowledge which is
acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind." Einstein’s experiences
at the autocratic Luitpold Gymnasium caused him to later remark, "It is in fact
nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet
entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry… It is a very grave mistake to
think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of
coercion and a sense of duty."
A vote against Senate Bill 11 and/or House Bill 4042 is not a vote against
education. It would be a demonstration of our faith in the value of the
education we offer (while recognizing there is much room for improvement), faith
in the ability of our teachers to present it engagingly (except when frantically
cramming for high-stakes standardized tests), and faith in our young adults’
ability to make the right decision regarding their education.
Scott W. Baker, an elementary special education teacher in Shelby Public
Schools, previously worked for 12 years as a high school resource teacher. He
blogs at
http://perfectlydocile.typepad.com.