Another Reason To Miss School

Students should be in school.  It's only 180 or so days a year.

We have plenty of excused absences from school--illness, doctor/dentist appts, family funerals, court appointments, school activities, and plenty others--but one district in Virginia is adding a new excused absence:  protests:

One of the largest school districts in the United States has announced that it will allow students one excused absence per school year to participate civic activities such as protests.

Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia plans to start allowing the absences Jan. 27, 2020, news outlets reported. The district is the largest school system in the state.

Students in seventh through 12th grades can use the day for “civic engagement activities” such as attending marches or meeting with lawmakers, according to district spokeswoman Lucy Caldwell.

This entire country just made 21 the minimum age for buying tobacco or vaping products.  Voting waits until 18, and driving until 16.  You can be a child until age 26 and stay on your parents' health insurance.

But at 12 you can go protest.

I understand that teenagers can be very passionate about their beliefs.  I also know that most of them lack a true critical thinking ability--just read some of their essays--and many couldn't find their butts with both hands in a well-lit room.  That's why they should be in school.

 “Skipping school and business as usual is to show that there's no point in going to school if we are having our future taken away from us,” she said. “There's not a point to our education if we're not going to be alive in 10 years, 20 years, the end of the century.”

They should protest on weekends and during breaks.  And take classes in logic.

I see protests on "test days".  One of these days I will run a chi-squared analysis on absences on test/quiz days vs other days.  I have no doubt what the results would be, given that the number of empty seats on test/quiz days is noticeably higher than on other days.

By the way, does anyone else see in this new policy the potential for abuse by school administrators?