Why are they leaving school early?

Boys are leaving school too early – say the experts. Why are they leaving school early? Alternatively – why are they staying so long?

My grandad left school when he was 12. He could do multiplications (right up to the 15 times table) in his head – and fractions and percentages and he could do long division on paper. He thought calculators were an unnecessary gimmick.

He knew and understood Rudyard Kipling’s Captains Courageous (the book, not the movie). He knew about right and wrong, honesty and dishonesty, trust, reliability and loyalty. He knew politicians were not to be trusted; nor were insurance companies and banks.

He understood how mortgages worked; he understood how the local council worked. He volunteered his time and energy and money for the local community – as a fireman and on the school committee.

He didn’t like waste – he’d seen the tail-end of the Depression and so his shed was filled with things that might be useful one day. He fixed things that other people threw away; with stuff other people threw away. He said an open fire fuelled from wood gathered from the beach was better than electric heaters.

He’d owned his own fishing boat and so understood the meaning of hard work. He made his income with nets and hooks and craypots not with quotas, and the world sushi market hadn’t inflated fish prices. He repaired his own nets, extracted fish-hooks from others’ hands, and repaired the diesel engine and radio when necessary. He cooked and cleaned and, when he absolutely had to, he ironed. And he built his own house – treating the timber himself, doing the plumbing and running the electric wires. This was all without studying geometry and calculus and IT and home economics and geography.

He and my grandmother travelled to the US and Canada and the Pacific Islands and Australia. He thought NZ was safer, quieter and more civilised. He preferred the food here too – crayfish, paua, roast mutton, new potatoes, mayonnaise made from condensed milk, and fruit cake made by my grandmother.

So why are we wringing our hands in angst about boys leaving school too early?

Maybe they’re staying at school too long. Maybe they ought to be out in the world learning by doing, and by making mistakes, being told they’re not perfect and learning practical stuff like how to drive a truck or how to lift a bale of hay without wrecking their backs and how to use a chainsaw without chopping off a leg.

As long as a kid can read we shouldn’t stop him from leaving school and learning the rest for himself – if that’s what he wants.

— Peter Giddens