If you didn’t know better, you’d think that Bill 52, legislation that will prohibit kids who drop out of school before age 18 from driving a car, was devised by Mike Harris, not Dalton McGuinty.
It seems so much in the bullying, punitive style of the Harris government which favoured sending young offenders to boot camp to straighten them up.
What this legislation says is, we can no longer whup them upside the head for leaving school, so let’s strap their arms behind their backs symbolically by taking away their ability to hold a driver’s license.
There are many, many reasons why students leave school early, says veteran Wards 3-4 Peel District School Board Trustee Ruth Thompson, who has sat through innumerable Supervised Alternative Learning for Excused Pupils (SALEP) hearings.
That’s a body where 14 and 15-year-old students who want to leave early must explain their decision. The program provides a transition to the world of work for those granted permission to leave early, in some cases involving special classes and work placements.
A lot of kids leave school, according to Thompson, because they have to help support their families or earn money for their own future educations. Taking away a driver’s license isn’t going to prevent them from going, it’s just going to make it more difficult for them to get a job and help out.
“I don’t know that there is any benefit,” says the board’s vice-chair. “There are some kids who just want to go and you’re sure not going to stop them. If you’re stopping them from getting employment, then they’re going to be out on the street and that’s worse.”
Since a lot of those dropping out are high-risk students who have already been turned off school, you’re just prolonging their pain and making it more difficult on remaining students who do want to be in class. And you may have significantly reduced their chances of getting a foot in the door at many service industry positions where a car is a necessity.
Instead of wasting their time on this piece of legislation, Ontario should consider innovative alternative programs to keep kids in school through creativity, not coercion.
Maybe we need a bill that says that if politicians pass punitive legislation that has no apparent benefit, they’re prohibited from running for re-election.
Comments (2)
Great Blog entry, John,
You wrote:
"Since a lot of those dropping out are high-risk students who have already been turned off school, you’re just prolonging their pain"
I recall that one of the worst things to ever happen to middle school students was that "Shop" and Family Studies were cut by the Harris Government as "frills". Kids so looked forward to those two subjects! Shop was an escape from academics and Family Studies always held the possibility for potential food.
Loss of Shop was viewed as the worst thing to happen and No-Shop hit boys the hardest. The high-risk students who had such difficulty with pencil-and-paper tasks at least had Shop to saw, hammer, solder and tinker --a chance to shine. Shop was a magnet for after-school activities for the very students who found academia so crushing --SO spirit-sucking.
I remember the saddest thing about it all was how the students, after token complaints, so meekly accepted their loss.
They knew they had No Real Voice. They knew...
Of course, on the bright side, "No Real Voice" prepares them for The Real World.
Signed,
The Mississauga Muse
Posted by The Mississauga Muse | August 25, 2006 9:54 PM
Posted on August 25, 2006 21:54
It seem's like a life time ban on driving forces the same hand as Pan Handling and the infamous Squeegee Kid Bill. Nobody really knows why politicians like to muzzle Bit Bulls when what we really need is good legislation to muzzle politicians that like to hear their own voice.
Posted by Wayne Nagy | August 25, 2006 9:42 PM
Posted on August 25, 2006 21:42