Preparing For A Bright Future

Preparing for a Bright Future

In recent years, there has been an ever-increasing debate posed by young people about the long-held practice of mandatory attendance for high school students. For a variety of reasons, young people today are questioning the societal norm and attempting to invoke their own personal right to make decisions for themselves. While there is some validity to their arguments, regular attendance in high school is a necessary requirement to build an intellectually proficient, socially responsible and economically successful adult population in our country.

There is, without a doubt, a certain segment of the adolescent population that feels, for themselves, high school is a waste of time. Many of these students believe that they have already acquired the basic skills, such as reading, writing and functional math, that are necessary to function in today’s world and have no intention of pursuing post-secondary studies. Why waste their time attending high school?

For most students, it is true that by the time they reach high school, they absolutely should have the basic cornerstones of education and have a working knowledge of those skills. The assumptive error that is being made is believing that this is the point when their academic learning should cease. On the contrary, the basic skills have been taught so that in high school, higher levels of learning can proceed. Once a student has learned the basic skills, educators can focus on teaching students how to apply and expand those skills. Expanding a student’s current thought process to include critical and analytical thinking, reasoning, conjecture and inference, and the ability to think in the abstract, to name just a few disciplines, teaches necessary skil...

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...nt, later in life, the person may realize the mistake they made when they choose to stop attending high school, however, for most at this stage, the opportunity to return to school becomes a harder decision due to loss of income and possible family obligations.

Providing distinct, research based arguments in favour of maintaining the mandatory attendance policies for Canadian high schools may not quiet the opposing voices. Today’s youth have found their voice and will continue to endorse their freedom of choice. However, mandatory attendance in high school is imperative to ensure that today’s students grow into a strong adult population with the capability to make good solid judgements and decisions, of being socially aware and responsible, and equipped with the opportunity and ability to provide an economically successful future for themselves and their families.