THE Government is much exercised about school absenteeism. Unfortunately, the only educational solution to this problem is to make schools so irresistible to all children that they attend them without being herded in by adults.
The national curriculum with its middle-class academic bias makes this impossible. Educators have known this for years, but our culture still maintains that childhood is something between a crime and a mental disease, for which the only cure is a day-prison with intensive aversion-therapy.
Until we release ourselves from this nonsensical illusion children will continue to avoid schooling.
Christopher R Shute Press Liaison, Education Now Ltd 7 Kiln Way Polesworth, Staffs
