by arthur Weinreb, associate Editor,
November 11, 2004
Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty has come up with a plan to decrease the dropout rate in the province’s secondary schools. The premier is planning to increase the age for mandatory enrollment to 18, up from the current age of 16. Planning to decrease the percentage of students who drop out by forcing them to stay in school is brilliant in its simplicity; but then again, no one does simplicity as well as our Dalton. Ontario has a shortage of doctors so no doubt the Liberals will be introducing legislation requiring 55 and 60-year old family practitioners to remain in their offices.
Speaking at a Liberal Party conference McGuinty said, "Soon, we will introduce the most important pieces of our plan, a bill that will require our young people to keep learning until age 18 in a classroom or an apprenticeship or a job placement program."
McGuinty’s plan to force 16 and 17-year-olds to remain in school will work to decrease the rate at which teens drop out of school. This could be one of those rare times when what Dalton McGuinty says is the truth. He deserves kudos for that.
By forcing kids to stay in school longer when they have no desire to be there, the education premier automatically assumes that these unmotivated students will "keep learning". To force young people to remain in school when they would rather be working or home watching the Jerry Springer Show is not going to result them learning very much. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him learn to analyze its the chemical composition. This idea is nothing more than a feel good exercise for Dalton and his merry band of Fiberals. Keeping unmotivated students in school for another two years will be of absolutely no benefit to them other than allowing them to apply for jobs as astronauts after being able to put that they have taken up space in school on their resumes. They will resent being forced to stay where they don’t want to be and will likely become hostile and turn to bullying. No one wants to employ a bully although Dalton could give them work in Pit Bull Georgie Smitherman’s Ministry of Health.
If, contrary to the wishes of the government some of these students accidentally develop minds of their own and leave school early, there will be penalties. Parents can be fined up to $200 for their truant adolescents. The Liberals love to use the plural when thinking up how to ding parents for more money, but we all know many of these kids come from single parent homes. Two hundred bucks is a lot of money for single mother households, especially now when these moms have to pay to have their eyes tested or to get physiotherapy.
It is also possible that the truant teen could be sent to the slammer if he or she refused to go to school until the ripe old age of 18. Gerard Kennedy, the Minister of Education said that this would be a very very rare occurrence. Despite the fact that the Fiberals are at best loose with the truth and at worst congenital liars, Kennedy speaks the truth. after all, how many 16 and 17-year-olds go to jail for anything in Ontario? at the risk of harkening back to the old days of the Mike Harris government, Kennedy’s statement about truants not being incarcerated is common sense. The most likely penalty that the truant will get is house arrest where his or her single parent, still reeling over the $200 fine will have no better luck keeping the kid in the house as they did getting him or her to go to school.
Too often many governments fail to initiate policy. They find it easier to expropriate another party’s principles and modify them to suit their own agenda. The federal Liberals are well known for this; stealing policies from the CCF/NDP or the Reform/alliance/Conservatives, depending upon which way the wind blows. But the "Keep the Unmotivated Kid in School act" or whatever they plan to call it is pure Dalton McGuinty.
Dalton McGuinty was bound to tell the truth one day. You know what they say about those monkeys and typewriters.