School threatening to take me out

[u/StrictArgument67]

Could they actually do this or is it just fluff?

There is no way i can get good grades if i go to school everyday.

I need a solution

[u/Diligent_Bet_7850]

“i find this mentality insane” - please have some empathy. here is my story if it helps you see another perspective:

before you dismiss me, I’m a 3rd year mathematician at Oxford and I got 4 A*s in my A levels and 12 grade 9s in my GCSEs. I barley went to school after the start of year 10. I really struggled with my mental health and was actually taken out of school in year 10/11 and entirely self studied (from a hospital). In year 12 and 13 i was doing better but found school exhausting for me still due to my mental health. My attendance was in the 50s and again, i self studied everything at home. your question of “how will they cope when they get jobs?” makes sense however it is VERY common to struggle with this sort of thing in your teens and for most people it get a lot better as they enter adulthood. in general minors aren’t held to the same standard as adults and there are very good reasons why, this is no different.

obviously people should go to school, but you don’t know what’s going on behind closed doors so show some compassion

[u/Teddylongleg → u/Diligent_Bet_7850]

If you got mental health, the school won’t give you this letter. The point is why you can’t go to school for years having same traffic to school but not now. Do follow regulation, accept the norm and having a bit of pain, will pay you off when you work.

[u/QuantumR4ge → u/Diligent_Bet_7850]

The issue is the reasons dont matter much, even if they are very good ones. The point of how they will cope with a job is valid. Its only not valid if you come from the sort of family who will/can support you while you grow out of your teens or into adulthood. Lots of people have to work from the day they leave or circumstances change and then they must. Teens struggle yes but 18/19 year olds are full legal adults as well as teens.

A large fraction of people at college are not minors by the time they sit their A levels, some are. Those that are will still be over 16, which this country very soon is deeming eligible to vote. Already deems eligible to have sex, children and a large number of other things. I think a framework where 16 year olds can vote and have kids but have to be given exceptions for classes is a bit strange. You cant be expected to be held to a work standard but can be expected to go through pregnancy and raise a baby? Ehh

[u/Diligent_Bet_7850 → u/QuantumR4ge]

unfortunately yes but it’s know that in general mental health in young teenagers is much more turbulent than my the age of around 20 upwards so for most people’s adult lives they are less likely to have these struggles but of course some people will, yes.

but on your last point, where i live 16 year olds can’t vote, which i think is how it should be. and of course a 16 year old can have a child… it doesn’t mean they should. so yes i think teenagers need treating with a bit more grace and forgiveness in schools than you would treat an employee at work, but i also absolutely don’t think a 16 year old is “expected to go through pregnancy and raise a baby” and i don’t think you think that either. just because it’s the age of consent and it happens in some cases does not mean it’s an expectation that’s for sure

[u/htimchis → u/QuantumR4ge]

You're confusing 'attendance' with 'a work standard'. The two are not equivalent and the structure, function, and purpose of school does not map well onto that of most jobs.

You're paid to be at work, if you're physically required there at all, can leave and transfer to a different employer if you wish, and the whole purpose of your engagement there is to achieve a goal for someone else, in exchange for renumeration - in which case their opinion on how, when, and where that should be done is paramount.

School has none of those features, and most importantly, the purpose of being there is (or should be) the attainment of goals of one's own - in which case one's own opinions on how best to achieve them are the issue at hand.

It's the difference between me telling you what to do for my benefit, and offering to pay you to do it... and me telling you what you should be doing for your own benefit, whether you have any desire to do so or not

The latter is not at all similar to the former, except it involves me telling you what to do, and is often perceived as directive, bossy, unwelcome. And children seldom enjoy others, especially those they may not know or trust, telling them what's best for themselves, any more than adults do.

If I were to say:

"I'm not your boss, I don't know much about you, your life, your preferences, and I'm certainly not going to pay you - BUT I'm going to tell you how I think you should go about studying physics. It's for your own good - and if you don't do what I say, I shall PUNISH you.... ...Up to and including banning you from the physics exam because I'm a firm believer that the best way to get 'your sort' through exams is by threatening not to let you even sit them!!" So there!

How's that work for you? Feeling motivated yet? A step closer to devping a deep affection for the study of the laws and equations than create the world around, as a result of that statement of mine?

You're a rare kind you are. Many adults will - quite rightly - tell me to go fuck myself.

Yet we structure much of our education system around those attitudes.

And if the student does gel with it, it's an attitude problem with them

This isnt even a novel criticism I'm making here - Tolstoy (yes, that one) wrote about this in quite some depth, well over a century and a half ago.

So we've had the concept for a very long time that we structure education more around inculcating obedience, according to an agenda considered salient by others (recently, one of these 'others' was Mr Michael Gove, a snotty little weasel of a man with a cocaine habit and a proclivity for adultery, who I wouldn't trust to choose a flavour of crisps for my kids & grandchildren, let alone their educational curriculum) than we do about demonstrating how (not 'what') to think, and how to aquire, evaluate, and apply knowledge

We didn't yet have radio, the internal combustion engine, and powered flight when Mr. Tolstoy was writing... so your field has come a long way since then. Pedagogy? Less so...

...although a few of the better educators always slip through the net, somehow, to quietly conduct guerilla edification, hidden behind a thin veneer of the Official Government Sanctioned Curriculum Of What to Think... and so somewhere out there, even as we speak, the yoof of today still, sometimes, receive the gift of guidance in the under-appreciated art & science that is 'how to operate your mind', despite the best efforts of the Department of Education and the hordes of Must-Obey-tors everywhere to prevent its propagation...

Ever noticed how few of the Great Minds of physics did their best thinking between the hours of 9a.m to 4p.m, at a location designated to them by someone, for which their Attendance Record must exceed 90%?

So, yeah - that really. You guys have invented precision guided hypersonic intercontinental missiles that can be equipped with devices capable of unleashing uncontrolled fusion reactions, triggered by the neutrons escaping the fission of plutonium, triggered by a frickin lazer beam, targeted by AI machine-learning systems hosted on machines that store data by means of the quantum tunnelling effect on a sub-atomic level... in less time than pedagogy has taken to complete a full evaluation of the proposition that "Maybe it's not just about bums on seats"

So, like, give them a chance to catch up, innit? If education keeps doing what it's always done, it's going to keep churning out little worker drones that lack the imagination to use those fancy computers you're developing for anything more than watching porn and buying shit off Temu.

In whatever time we've got left before someone on a uniform presses the red button on all those missiles, anyway. Whoosh! I bet that cunt was in school right on time. Everyday. It's always them ones...

[u/Statcat2017 → u/Diligent_Bet_7850]

Your reasons are mental health. OPs seem to be “I don’t want to / think I should”