DEFINING "EDUCATION?" teachers left swinging gently in the wind

What do we expect education to accomplish? That depends. What one person thinks is a "good" education, another thinks is a "bad" one. We disagree more than you might imagine. Let's look at some definitions and see.

 

"Education in virtue ... which makes a man eagerly pursue the ideal perfection of citizenship and teaches how to rightly rule and obey, this is the only education ... which deserves the name." 

Plato (c. 427-347 B.C.) Athenian philosopher and seminal thinker.

"There can be no true education which is not wholly directed to man's last end ... there can be no ideally perfect education which is not Christian education." 

Pius XI (1857-1939) Roman Catholic Pope from 1922 to 1939

"The supreme end of education is expert discernment in all things — the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and genuine rather than the bad and counterfeit." 

Samual Johnson (1709-1784) British lexicographer, essayist and critic.

"Education, beyond all other devices of human origin, (should be) the great equalizer of the conditions of men — the balance wheel of the social machinery." 

Horace Mann (1796-1859) American public education pioneer.

 "Education is the transmission of civilization." 

Ariel and Will Durant, (1898-1981 and 1885-1981) American writers and historians.

A chief aim of education must be to impart to the individual the courage to play the game against any and all odds, the nerve to walk into the ambushes of existence, the hardiness to face the most despicable truth about himself and not let it daunt him permanently."

Dom Marquis (1935-2022) American philosopher.

Real education should educate us out of self into something far finer; into a selflessness which links us to all humanity." 

Lady Nancy Astor (1879-1964) British politician and first woman seated as a Member of Parliament. 

Education by a national state must aim primarily not at the stuffing of mere knowledge, but at the building of bodies which are physically healthy to the core. Only after this comes the training of the mental abilities."

Adolf Hitler  (1889-1945) German despot, mass murderer and initiator of WW2.

"Education is the instruction of the intellect in the laws of nature."  

Thomas Huxley (1825-1895) British naturalist and pioneer of evolution theory.

"There is only one subject-matter for education, and that is life in all its manifestations." Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) British philosopher and theoretical mathematician.

"Education is a weapon whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and who is struck with it." 

Joseph Stalin (1879-1953) Soviet tyrant and mass murderer.

This sampling illustrates the wide range of disagreement regarding a "good" education. And this disagreement readily transitions into a wide range of conflicts and controversies. Yes, there is wide agreement that education involves the acquisition of basic skills such as reading, writing and arithmetic. But even here there is disagreement regarding how they should be taught — much less the ends they should serve.

Rest assured, whatever significant content and methodology educators choose will be controversial — if it isn't first neutered, of course. This is why school "leaders' stick to vague purr words regarding instructional goals and objectives. But trouble still arises because teachers must attempt to add detail in order to create actual lessons. And if that lesson involves teaching anything significant, it will generate controversy. That is when school administrators  scurry for cover, leaving the teacher swinging gently in the wind. So many teachers water down whatever they teach to render that content as unobjectionable as possible. But they often end up teaching harmless humbug that results in little lasting learning.

What is to be done? Not much in a society as diverse as ours. It's just the way things are. Of course smart kids learn anyway. But what they learn is mostly content from the hidden curriculum. That's the unofficial lessons kids absorb by experiencing school routines, rules, sub-cultures and power structures. Is that knowledge valuable? Yes, as far as it goes. But there should be more to school than that. 

Is there any way around this problem? Yes, live in an unusually homogeneous school district whose values match your own. The only other option (Besides home instruction, which is generally a farce.) is to find a private school that fits your values and your pocket book. Good luck with that.

Here's a final thought. Community consensus strongly influences how school rules are defined and enforced. For instance, years ago I taught in a rural public school serving a community that agreed on sparing the rod, spoiled the child. In consequence the penalty for serious violations of school rules was an eye watering encounter with a wooden paddle. (It was an orderly school district where instruction was possible and personal safety pretty much assured.) But that ended when corporal punishment was ruled out state wide by compassionate legislators who would never have to personally suffer the consequences of their magnanimious solicitude. 

SUICIDAL TOLERANCE: championing a judgement free world

The most “woke“ among us champion what might best be called "suicidal tolerance." Why suicidal? Because the foolishness they preach, essentially a judgement and ranking free world, would ultimately eradicate expertise and even tolerance itself.

Whence springs their wooly-headed demand that value judgements and rankings must perish? The main source is their conviction that values are mere “social constructs.” That belief leads them to jump to the conclusion that no culture is better than any other. They ignore, or at least are ignorant of, the elemental fact that some cultures are so intolerant that merely advocating,  tolerance, will get you killed. (Isis comes readily to mind.)

Paradoxically, women are included among the most vocal disciples of this suicidal religion. And the worst offenders are often academic women. One wants to ask these supposedly educated females, so you don’t think it wrong to have some crone excise village girl’s clitoris’s with a razor blade? How about forbidding women to vote? Requiring them to be absolutely obedient to their husbands? Or to meekly suffer death by stoning if men judge you guilty of adultery? Should these hyper-tolerant ladies disapprove of such things they cannot logically insist that cultural practices are value free! But they still do.

In the real world cultural practices often have weighty moral content. Attitudes regarding individualism provide one particularly stark example. The fact that valuing or even tolerating individualism is a moral choice is precisely why some cultures suppress it. They disapprove of the underlying value it places on individual perceptions, judgements and choices. The Taliban, for instance, permit nothing of the kind. These zealous fanatics punish any individuals who question the smallest details of their very narrow interpretation of Islam. They even forbid listening to music, dancing and flying kites — the later a very popular past time with Afghan children. Why? Because they perceive such enjoyment as being immoral.

The fact is that cultural practices often have very weighty moral value. And that is exactly why they are NOT morally equal. Just the opposite. In fact, this moral content is why cultures are more or less dysfunctional. Why? Because of what they will or won’t tolerate and the human happiness or misery that results. 

The Taliban are a sterling example of a dangerously dysfunctional culture. Of course it’s intolerant to make such a claim. But tolerance is not always desirable. After all, some practices, rape, honor killing, and genocide, for instance, are plainly intolerable. Even a Harvard professor should be able to grasp that. Although some don’t.

Let’s dig a little deeper into cultural relativism’s implications. A major one is that this relativism necessarily opposes any rankings based on merit. Do you want your favorite baseball team to acquire a highly skilled pitcher. Would you prefer having your heart surgery performed by a masterful surgeon? Well, according to these believers, you are supporting existing racial and socioeconomic hierarchies. So also does insisting these “woke” individuals be able to tell their ass from third base. And most can’t.

A recent protest by Harvard students illustrates how far this silliness has advanced. Concerned that A’s now make up 60% of all Harvard course grades — up from 24% in 2005 — Harvard has now capped course A grades at 20%. This prompted a student petition asserting that assigning grades on the basis of performance creates “a system of ranking and sorting that mirrors and reinforces existing racial and socioeconomic hierarchies.”

To some extent it does mirror these hierarchies But far from perfectly. If it did, neither upward nor downward mobility would exist and both certainly do. For example, I know a woman who was born in a deep south home with a dirt floor and parents near the bottom of the social hierarchy. But, by dint of academic accomplishment, risk taking, good judgement and damn hard work, she now owns her own accounting firm and also is producing major motion pictures. Are there similar success stories? Of course there are. So the assumption that a system of ranking and sorting simply “mirrors and reinforces existing hierarchies” is plainly false. 

Besides, where would we be without ranking and sorting? We would find ourselves in a competence free world. Heart surgeons selected non-judgementally wouldn’t necessarily know a damn thing about what they were doing. Buildings and bridges would regularly collapse because they were designed by incompetent structural engineers. In short, we couldn’t rely on any specialized expertise whatsoever. What a nightmare.

Clearly a system without judging and ranking belongs in Lala land. So we must vigorously reject the judgement free style advocated by the most “woke” among us. Besides, these folks aren’t really woke at all — they’re dreaming! But as their crackpot social philosophy gains ascendence, their dream is becoming our nightmare.

ARE MUSLIM IMMIGRANTS A THREAT? an historic comparison

Many Americans worry about Muslim immigration. They fear these newcomers will prove culturally incompatible, religiously intolerant, and potentially larcenous. Moreover they imagine them flooding into this country in unacceptable numbers. What should we make of this? 

Let's make an historical comparison. In the 19th century lots of Americans were similarly concerned about the Irish Catholics who were flooding into what then was an overwhelmingly Protestant America. 

A major concern was that these immigrants were obedient to a foreign autocrat — the Pope — who led an authoritarian and anti- Protestant institution. They doubted that a people accustomed to such religious authoritarian intolerance, could ever learn to live in America. In fact they feared these Catholics might band together and become another America. And their concern was magnified by the exceedingly large numbers of these immigrants. By the dawn of the Civil War the Catholic presence in America already exceeded the total population of the U.S. just 70 years previously. And their numbers swelled much, much further as the 19th century advanced. 

This was an awful lot of culturally different people for the U.S. to absorb. But ultimately, despite widespread discrimination, these Irish Catholic immigrants proved capable of blending in. They understood, embraced, even exploited democracy, and by the third generation provided the nation with the 35th President of the United States, the very Irish-American John F. Kennedy, .

How have the Muslims done in contrast? First off, there has never been an America without Muslims. But most of the early arrivals were slaves and soon lost their Muslim religion. These days most Muslims arrive direct from Muslim lands. They pledge no allegiance to the equivalent of a Pope, nor even embrace a unified religion. In fact they harbor bloody disagreements about what it takes to even be a Muslim. But the one thing they aren't is Christian. And that makes a decided difference in how they are both received and perceived.

One distinction should be made immediately. Are they Islamists? What's the difference? Muslims follow Islam, a religion based on the Qur'an and the teachings of Muhammed. They encompass some two billion people of many different cultures and political views. Islamism, in distinction, is a political ideology holding that their interpretation of Islam should play a decisive role in both government and society. In fact a small number of Muslims of the Islamist persuasion have turned out to be murderous terrorists. Those who crashed passenger planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon being the most prominent. Yes, these perpetrators were Saudi nationals. But many Americans still link terrorism of this sort to Muslims in general. And this is why a sizable segment of Americans fear Muslim immigration.

So what about Muslim immigrants fitting in? Will they prove absorbable or forever marginal — even alien? That depends in the above distinction. Islamists are a clear, present and future danger. Muslims, in general, are not. But the present reality is that a substantial number of Americans believe the United States is, and should remain, a Christian nation. For these folks, non-Christians are, ipso facto, un-American. In fact a substantial number of them also believe that the United States was founded as, and should remain, a Christian nation. 

This is false. Nevertheless, it is continually preached by far right Christian-nationalists including some well-known TV evangelists. These "patriots" ignore, or are ignorant of, the fact that many of America’s most influential founders, for instance Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Ethan Allen and Thomas Paine, were deists or rationalists, not textbook Christians. Moreover our founders agreed that the United States should NOT adopt a state religion. But none of this gives pause to those who subscribe to the Christian-America myth.

What about the fear that Muslims threaten to overwhelm us by sheer numbers. At present, this is factually groundless. Muslim immigrants constitute a tiny number of new arrivals compared to the historic flood of Irish Catholics. In fact they amount to less than 5% of all immigrants entering America. Moreover Muslims account for less than 1% of America's population.   

Clearly, though, Muslims and Christians do not always share a happy coexistence. Nor do many Muslims fit cozily into the Western way of life. The most fanatical among them, the Islamists, a small minority to be sure, actually aim to convert all of America to Islam — if necessary, by the sword. Minimally they want to install their version of Sharia Law in place of current law. But these true believers presently constitute a relatively small minority of Muslim immigrants. 

But here is something else to consider. Some Somali-Americans massively defrauded Minnesota, Maine and the United States government out of billions and billions of dollars in what was intended as aid. This massive fraud causes some Americans to link criminality and exploitive, ungrateful citizenship to Muslims collectively. But remember, the Irish-American experience proves Muslims have no corner on immigrant criminality. Some immigrant Irish became criminals of the first magnitude; and the "Irish Mob" was one of the nation’s most notorious organized criminal conspiracies. And, of course, some later arriving Italian-Americans proved equally capable of organized criminality. Somali immigrant’s have no patent on this kind of behavior. But people believe they do, and that belief is true in its consequences. 

 Looking back, many Americans once initially thought Irish-American Roman Catholic immigrants were a distinct threat. This proved false. Will Muslim immigrants also attain, even desire, the same degree of acceptance? We shall see.

"WOKE" RHETORIC AND THE SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY

Over emphasis on injustice backfires. It discourages the personal responsibility that is essential for meaningful growth. Become convinced you are a powerless victim and you will be. 

For instance, African-Americans have dealt with profound injustice in immoderate amounts for centuries. But repeated hammering on this injustice, by excessively "woke" educators, for instance, can trigger the self-fulfilling prophecy. 

Better known as the Thomas Theorem by sociologists, here is how it works. Put simply, when a situation is defined as true, it is true in its consequences. Why? Because outcomes depend as much on the individual’s perception of the situation as they do on the situation itself. Should a person believe that they are a hapless victim, they will behave accordingly. 

Human behavior is not defined by objective facts, but by how people view and make sense of those facts. So as "helpless" victims, they discount their own agency; their own ability, even their own degree of responsibility, for what happens in their lives. When that happens no oppressor is needed. The "oppressed" become their own oppressor. Seeing themselves as powerless, they do nothing but impatiently await salvation. And that can be a long wait indeed. 

I spent over 50 years as an educator. And one of the saddest and most disheartening aspects was watching the above happen over and over again. Instead of availing themselves of the opportunity a free education offered, too many kids, viewing effort as useless, turned their backs. And in so doing they threw away the very best life chance many of them will ever have. 

In 2025 providing this gift to all of America's kids cost the public an average of $17,000.00 per student per year. That's one hell of a present. And it's made repeatedly over 12 long years. Perhaps so many kids do so is because accepting that gift has been made compulsory — possibly a critical mistake. But whatever the reason, a dispiriting number of kids turn up their noses at a gift worth over $164,000.00 — actually far more considering inflation. 

Yes, school curricula, policies and procedures can be out of step with the world many of these kid's live in. But however imperfect it may be, schooling still provides them with a precious means of life enhancement. 

It's especially ironic that many of the kids I saw rejecting this opportunity are African-American. Are these kids aware that slave owners rigorously opposed any and all attempts to school "their property?" Do they know that enslavers also stifled any attempts by that "property" to learn on their own? Their enslavers knew that an education was potentially liberating. Too many of their descendants do not. 

Whatever our school's shortcomings, and there are many, they still offer one of the best opportunities for advancement many kids will ever have. But that opportunity can only by seized by youngsters who stay clear of self-pity, focus sharply on their own agency, and take full responsibility for their own behavior. And, ironically, the well meaning sympathy of the excessively "woke" undermines all of that. In trying to be supportive, they do these kids a profound disservice by preaching the gospel of defeat.

 

PUBLIC SCHOOLS: who's really in charge?

Until the 1920's America's public schools were chiefly a local responsibility. In the 1920's, for instance, some 162,800 local school districts were governed by locally elected lay people who raised the bulk of the revenue, enjoyed considerable autonomy and were responsive to local pressure. These days, state imposed consolidation has reduced that number by 88%, or a total of 13,598. Consequently local autonomy, control and sensitivity to local pressures have shrunk dramatically. 

At the same time school funding gradually shifted from the local to the state level — although the proportion varied from state to state. These days Vermont provides the most: 87%. Utah the least: 58%. The remaining balance of the funding falls mainly on local school districts. The federal government provides just 8%. 

Here's why this matters. Whoever pays, usually sets the rules. With state funding predominating, most key decisions are made at the state level. And when the federal government has gotten more and more involved. Local authorities often are not consulted in any meaningful way. Just told what they must do. These local authorities also are often required to pick up some, sometimes all, of the tab. (State and federal law-makers are fond of enacting one requirement or another then imposing much, sometimes all, of the cost of accomplishment it on local school districts.

There was a brief increase in federal funding beginning most markedly with the administration of George W. Bush — the self-styled "Education President." At this time the federal government increased education spending about 33% to 12% of the total. This further diminished state and local power by adding federal rules that went with the funding. As time when on, enthusiasm for education spending diminished and with it all the increased federal funding. Their rules, however, are still around. Consequently parents and local communities find themselves further and further removed from meaningful influence.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Another source of community and parental disempowerment is the ever decreasing number of schools and a concomitant  increase in the number of students per remaining schools. In 1920 there were some 190,000 public schools, k-12, with an average of 100 students per school. By 2020 there were only 131,000 public schools serving an average of 528 students per school. That's five times more students per school than in1920.  

As school populations grew, individual student differences became less and less important. The chances of a principal even knowing the name of every student, much less anything about them, shrank to nearly zero. Their knowledge of individual parents also shrank dramatically. 

So where does this leave us? With public schools that are less and less responsive to individual differences and more and more indifferent to community values. Who's really in charge? State and federal bureaucrats who are in the hire of state and federal legislators, that's who. Whether or not that's what we want, that's what we've got.

LEARNING WHAT THEY LIVE: not what they're told

Years ago the famed educational philosopher John Dewey tellingly observed that children "learn what they live." Teachers can drone on and on about democracy, for instance. But if they run a despotic classroom, the kids learn to adapt to it. Maybe even learn to need it. Dewey was precisely right. Children learn what they live.  

It's hard to overemphasize the importance of this "hidden curriculum." It is powerful, yet often overlooked. Lessons "taught" in this way can last a lifetime. The person who taught me the most about tyranny and abuse of power, for instance, was my fourth grade teacher, Miss Weast . (Behind her back we kids called her: "Miss Weast, the big fat beast.") Feared by all, this angry, defective, frustrated woman extorted compliance by means of threats and violence. A ruler across the knuckles of your out-stretched hand, for example. 

Eventually, she did go too far. She held a youngster against a hot steam radiator as punishment. His relatively minor burns did not get her fired, as you might expect. But she was transferred to another school. Not before she had unintentionally taught me about the abuse of power, however. I still remember that lesson well even though it was many, many years ago. 

Here's another example. This one concerning Catholic parish schools of the 1950's. In those days a number of overworked and under appreciated nuns bullied, slapped and otherwise mistreated the children in their charge. This taught the kids some unfortunate lessons. For instance, the little girl who lived next door to me developed severe school phobia even though she was never touched herself. She learned school was dangerous. 

I'm not sure what these nuns thought they were doing. Making 'better' Catholics, perhaps. But in this girl's case they taught her that the sermonizing about Christian love, mercy and forgiveness, was all talk. She also learned that it's not what people say, but what they do that counts. Valuable lessons, to be sure. But hardly included in the official curriculum.

Here's still another instance involving an entirely different circumstance. As a professor of education I visited a lot of inner city schools. Most were chaotic. In some the turmoil was so bad that learning was nearly impossible and personal safety doubtful. Evidently those in charge lacked the power and/or will to impose meaningful consequences for gross misbehavior. What did youngsters learn while enduring this chaos? That bullies rule? That might makes right? That there is no point in even trying to learn? That the real world is not even close to what it's supposed to be? Take your pick. 

Do children learn what they live? Count on it. So what did you learn from the "hidden curriculum" you experienced?

COMPULSORY EDUCATION: a mistake?

Has compulsory education turned out to be a mistake?  That essential question remains oddly unaddressed. This is most peculiar, given the serious school problems that unmotivated, disruptive, often openly hostile, kids create when they are compelled to attend. They learn little, disrupt the entire process, and throw prodigious amounts of taxpayer's money into the toilet. 

To learn, ya pretty much gotta wanna. And those who must be compelled to attend, generally don't wanna. They are the same kids who "graduate" from high school barely able to read. Moreover, instead of being in school they are often sufficiently truant to make their education completely impossible. In fact, truancy rates in inner city schools are often so comically high that it's a wonder we even pretend that meaningful teaching is going on. And even when they aren't tardy, many so called "students" show up hours late. Wandering into school at their own convenience.

It's time to ask, wouldn't it be far better if these "students" weren't there? Better for whom? Better for those who want to learn, certainly. And better for their teachers as well. But there seems to be little concern about the fate of the motivated kids, or their teachers, both of whom pay an unacceptable price for the disruptive presence of these others. Instead the focus and disproportionate amounts of money are typically spent on the disrupters. Those whose behavior causes serious problems, sometimes physical danger for everyone around them, receive the most attention, sympathy and resources. 

We waste prodigious amounts of tax payer's money continuing this pretense that everyone is educable. The latest 2022-2023 data shows the total average cost of "educating" a youngster in a U.S. public school is about $163,000.00. Now, imagine giving a child a present worth that kind of money and have them not only to refuse to open it, but do their best to destroy it. Not just their own gift, mind you., but other's gifts as well. How? By making it impossible for them to learn. This is what we've been doing, year after year, decade after decade, for well-over a century. 

When "students" are compelled to attend, educators must try to force-feed them. Sure, some initially unwilling kids can be coaxed to learn. But this coaxing is so time consuming and costly that it is often impractical. After all, our public schools, for cost control purposes, must be run like factories. And factories run very poorly when the raw material is uncooperative, even oppositional. Painstaking efforts to seduce uncooperative learners disrupts the production process and consumes vast quantities of scarce resources that is far better used educating the willing. Nevertheless, we  pretend that compulsory education is working — or at least would be working if educators could only figure out how. So we go on forcing kids to attend, then pretend they are learning. 

 Meanwhile legislators and judges, safe in their offices far to the rear, have stripped teachers of any ability to impose meaningful sanctions for misbehavior or lack of effort. So these educators can't even coerce a semblance of civilized behavior from the disruptive. Worse, a similarly emasculated school administration offers besieged teachers little help. Some administrators even play defense by siding with the malefactors. So it goes, with pretense, turmoil and wastage rolling on and on. 

Folks worry that if we abandon compulsory education, disruptive kids will roam the streets threatening the peace. That has some validity. Except that, because of truancy, a lot of disruptive, potentially dangerous kids aren't in school to begin with — especially in nice weather. But, and here's a key point, it is NOT  the school's proper businesses to conduct part-time incarceration. The school's distinctive function is to educate, not incarcerate. And it is way past time to face up to the fact that when educators try to do both, they often can't do neither?

Of course day care is another unacknowledged function of public schooling. Teachers spend an average of 7 hours a day providing that service. Given a class of, say, 25, that means an elementary school teacher is providing day care 175 hours a day or 875 hours per week. That's 31,500 total hours of day care per school year. If the teacher were paid $15 an hour per child, he or she would have earned $472,500.00! Is this what keeping compulsory education in place is really all about? Well if it is, it shouldn't be. This, too, is NOT a distinctive function of schooling. And, just like temporary incarceration, it gets in the way of actual education.

In Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District (2017) ruled that schools must provide educational services that are reasonably designed to enable students to make progress appropriate in light of their circumstances. But what counts as "reasonably designed?" Suppose, for instance, a student is failing to make educational progress because his mother is a crack whore who is abusively neglectful and the absent father's identity is a multiple choice question? There are tens of thousands of kids facing similar situations in what passes for their home. And, of course, they are often among the kids who reject and disrupt the educational process. Is there any "reasonable design" possible for them, given available resources and a factory style setting? 

Should we decide to get serious, not just solemn, about public education we must take a fresh look at compulsory education and ask why we continue to spend billions upon billions of dollars yearly vainly trying to force-feed knowledge to kids who not only resist and resent it, but also prevent their classmates from learning. Isn't it time to consider public education a privilege rather than a right?  After all, the public is providing these youngsters and their parent(s) with free, very expensive services.

Ignoring the difficulties created by compelling attendance, school districts adopt truancy prevention programs. They are, in effect, encouraging the attendance of potential troublemakers. A major justification of these programs is that truancy breeds broader social problems. It's asserted, for instance, that 95% of juvenile offenders started as truants. We're told that truants are more likely to:

• join a gang running the risk of disease, injury or death; 
• use marijuana, alcohol and hard drugs; 
• become pregnant and drop out of school; 
• have low self-esteem, low aspirations, and educational failure; 
• be illiterate or have serious trouble reading; 
• engage in violent and criminal activities. 

But every one of these assertions suffers from the same fatal flaw. Just because these things correlate, does NOT mean one causes the other. All juvenile offenders start out as babies, for instance. But does s that cause a youngster to become a juvenile offender? Of course not.  Why assume, for instance, that gang membership begins with truancy? Isn't it more likely that gang membership encourages truancy?  The same applies to marijuana, alcohol and hard drug use. Sure, truants are more likely to engage in these behaviors. But why assume that it is truancy that causes them to do so? Are truants more likely to become pregnant and drop out of school? Sure they are; but is truancy the cause or the effect? Correlation is NOT causation.

As for low self-esteem, low aspirations, and educational failure, isn't it more likely that these things provoke truancy, rather than cause it?  The same applies to serious reading difficulties. And as for kids who engage in violence and criminal activities, don't blame truancy, blame lousy parenting, dysfunctional families, broken homes, poverty, violent neighborhoods, the illicit economic opportunities created by making certain intoxicants illegal, ad infinitum.

Truancy prevention isn't a problem if we simply quit compelling school attendance to begin with. We've grown used to kids rejecting, even actively destroying, the extremely expensive educational opportunities taxpayers provide. In fact this sort of behavior is so commonplace in some schools that the educational process is largely pretense. Teachers pretend they are teaching and administrators pretend to be running a school. Meanwhile standardized testing consistently shows that for many, compulsory education is a complete waste of money. 

Perhaps it's time to face up to the fact that this very expensive endeavor has failed. Instead let's concentrate those resources on effectively teaching youngsters who at least try to learn? But, you say, what is to be done with the "students" who reject, even trample this gift beneath their feet? That remains unresolved. Nevertheless, what is abundantly clear is maintaining the pretense that compulsory education is working is wasteful, counterproductive and foolish. Even worse, the chaos this compulsion generates is destroying the education of youngsters who actually do want to learn.