Thank you John for a very clear article on the issue and I for one totally agree with your solution and also think it is 100%. Here in Canada we used to have 2 programs, Katimavik and Canada World Youth, that were a boon to many kids just out of high school, one of those being our son, but they were not mandatory. So this combined with the the second alternative would be fantastic.
We have an epidemic of rights today and a drought of responsibility. A number of years ago when I was a first-year teacher I had the following experience. I was teaching at Guadalupe Area Project (GAP), otherwise charitably known as a “dropout school.” It was mostly a school for students who had been kicked out of the St. Paul Public School System for a variety of reasons. The school was started and run by a Sister Giovanni. She was a leader in migrant relations on the West Side of St. Paul. It was a largely Latino community. Many of the residents on the West Side were recent immigrants from Mexico or Central America.
Sister Giovanni believed in giving kids and people a second chance. She started GAP to help students who were displaced from the public school system. We had kids of all types and most were not traditional “school…
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Musings and Wonderings 