Nobody cares what you do.

I teach at an inner city high school. Truancy is a huge problem, and is probably the number one reason for students failure to succeed.

Why? Well, that's a loaded question, and I know that there are myriad societal, familial, cultural, and other reasons that interact together in a complex web. One reason, however, is the one that really bothers me. It's that students are convinced that nobody cares what they do all day long. Well, not nobody: their parents (hopefully) and their teachers. And that's it. If they can avoid those two groups, nobody else is going to give them any hassle about not being in school.

"Shouldn't you be in school?" How often do kids hear that? Hardly ever in this city.
I would love to live in a society where a convenience store clerk used his posted right to refuse service to anyone to refuse to sell a soda to a 13 year old at 10:30 on Wednesday morning.
Where a kid gets hassled about not being in school at the movie theater box office, at the mall by the security guards or the clerk at the GAP, by the bus driver who drops them off at Jamba Juice, by the police officers driving by looking for more serious crime to prosecute, by average citizens who see them hanging out on the street corner.

But of course, it's the school's responsibility. Some charitable souls might even go so far as to acknowledge that parent's share some of that responsibility with the teachers. I guess that teachers can use their lunch break and prep periods to drive around town in ever-expanding spirals around the school, looking for truant kids. I mean, isn't that what we're (under) paid for?

Oh, well, someday they'll turn 18, and when some of them end up on welfare or in jail, then it will be your problem, if you pay taxes, that is. Until then, don't worry about it. Teachers are used to being underpaid to do impossible jobs with no support and then being blamed for society's ills. What's one more impossible task?

- "'One B: B-A-B-A-R.' 'That's 2.' 'Yeah, but not right next to each other, I thought that's what you meant.'"