Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related Out of school for a couple of years

Need a reason why a child might miss a couple of years of school. If it's due to illness, need something they would fully recover from.

ML

Accompanying a parent to a remote part of the world (on a humanitarian mission or research tour), where there are no proper schools?

Another possibility would be if the parents try home schooling and then decide, after a couple of years, to send the child back to the public schools.

Joy,
Lynn

Thanks, guys. Gives me some ideas.

ML

When my daughter was out for several months for back surgery the school district sent a tutor. So just illness may not prevent official contact.

Hmm... child gets kidnapped by time traveler and is deposited a couple of yours in the future?

*scnr*

Michael

Homeschooling, as mentioned above. Also allows you to play with how well the kid is caught up. Though, IIRC, homeschoolers are subject to standardized testing, so "dumb as a box of rocks" won't fly any more than it would in mainstream schools. On the other hand, maybe the kid's parents were rocket scientists and/or hired tutors to bring him up to Einstein levels.

Also, depending on the age, maybe his family applied for hardship so s/he could drop out and go to work, and now that the situation has changed, s/he is going back to school. (That may not apply for younger kids, though; that's actually why we have truancy laws, according to my dad.)

If s/he has a chronic illness, it could have flared up and then gone into remission; it's not the same as getting over it, but for plot purposes, it might work.

I think homeschooling is your best bet. There are many reasons parents either choose to or have to homeschool, and equally as many reasons for the kid to be put back in. In my case, Mom had taken me out of public school because I wasn't emotionally suited for it, but then had to put me back in after a year because Dad got hit by lightning and so she had to work. (Yeah, it went about as well as you might expect. Oh well.)

No offense, but that's one of the strangest real-life things I've heard on these boards. I guess truth really is stranger than fiction.

Not in all states. We've been homeschooling for eight years and my children have never had to test. Testing, just for the record, does not benefit the children. State testing is just that- for the state. Scores determine funding, not whether or not a child is 'dumb as a box of rocks'. The only tests that truly matter to the child is college entrance tests such as SAT or ACT. Incidentally, the states that do require homeschoolers to test are doing so to either keep drawing funds for them or to monitor them. In my opinion that's too much government interference. Don't get me wrong. Some people were not cut out to educate their own children. But I also believe the government wasn't either. Two years ago, the high school in our district graduated 18 students who could not read past a third grade level! My 13 year old seventh grade nephew can't read as well as my 8 year old homeschooler. Nephew goes to public school. Son's never been. Nephew's also taken a test every year that states he's reading above average in his age group! So, homeschool does have its highlights.

SQD(who hopes ML doesn't go with homeschooling and bash the choice quite a few of us have made)

ML, the workability of homeschooling as a plot device depends on what you mean by missing school. If you just mean that the child wasn't there for a couple of years and so missed whatever events happened at the school during that time, you could use homeschooling, illness, travel, temporary job transfer of a parent, temporary custody transfer of the child (went to live with Grandma for a couple of years), study abroad (depending on the age of the child). If you mean that the child is two years behind in their schooling (i.e. a 12-year old in fifth grade), then homeschooling is not your answer. A child who left school after third grade and homeschooled for two years would return to school in the sixth grade, not in the fourth.

An illness which would make a child fall that far behind in school would have to be so serious that the child couldn't study, even with a private tutor. A hardship situation might work--say, the family is in such dire straights that they are traveling from town to town following odd jobs (maybe migrant farm workers) and the parents keep the child out of school in order to stay off the Child Services radar screen for fear of the child being taken from them or because they need the child to work or scrounge. BTW, it is illegal to pull a school-aged child out of school to work. It's grounds for removal to foster care.

Hey, everyone. I've already solved my problem on this issue and the necessary part of ths story is already posted, but thanks anyway. (And, no, there is no home schooling involved ).

ML

I wasn't sure I should hijack the thread to talk about homeschooling, but since ML has already set it free, i guess I'm safe.

Although my kids go to public school, I'm generally supportive of homeschooling and think that, for many families, it's as good or better for their kids. We are fortunate to have excellent programs in our local district, but we have lived in other areas that have not been as good of a fit for my two children, and as a result, I have educated myself on homeschooling, to the point of even developing tentative curriculums, in case I needed to quickly pull them out. That said, your argument above confuses "correlation" and "causation". Your son is homeschooled and is a high-acheiver. Your nephew attends public school and is an average achiever. However, just because these things occur together doesn't prove one caused the other -- that's faulty logic.

It's probably safe to say that your 8 year old son would have outstanding reading skills whether he was homeschooled or not. He's clearly got the genes for it, plus he's got great family support -- you still would have read to him early on, helped him with phonics as he sounded out words, taken regular trips to the library, surrounded him with books at home, etc., no matter where he attended classes. Whether he would have reached his full potential in a mediocre public school is definitely arguable, but to say that the only reason he's doing well academically is because he's "never been" to a public school simply doesn't follow. Similarly, while it might be true that your nephew could improve his reading skills by being homeschooled, it's also just as possible that he could improve just as much by having better family support, attending a better quality public school, or by being willing to put forth a stronger effort on his school work ... or it could be that he simply isn't wired to be a top reader.

To include a personal example, my children are high-achievers despite my daughter attending K-2 in an inter-city public school where 95% of the kids qualified for free-or-reduced lunch and my son attending a "fun" preschool rather than the fancy academic one that the upwardly-mobile neighborhood moms swore by. Years later, they routinely outscore kids who had many more "advantages", and that includes some kids who were/are homeschooled. Would they have reached an even higher level by now if I'd kept them home? Certainly it's a possibility ... but objectively speaking, I think the positives and negatives have balanced out nicely for them and I can't think of much I'd change.

Kathy (who hopes "bashing" public schools is just as unacceptable as "bashing" homeschoolers -- too much of the decision is in the details, and can't be painted with a wide brush.)

Kathy, you make some good points; and based on a book I've read ("Freakonomics" for anyone interested), I think it can also be argued that the kind of parents who care enough about academics to homeschool their children are probably also the kind that pass on genes for high academic achievement. Still, I think there is much to be said for Teacher-Students ratio and personalized lesson plans.

Also, as in my case, some kids are just *not cut out* for public school; it's emotionally stressful, and there's all kinds of social goings-on distracting one from studies. I mean, who's going to be thinking about math when there's the pressing issue of coming up with retorts for insults, etc., to worry about?

I guess it really depends on the school, the parents, and the child. Homeschooling again in 8th grade didn't work as well for me academically as it did in 2nd. I found my niche in community college classes, which were kind of similar to mainstream school but without the idiots getting in the way.

ETA: Queen of the Capes, here. I'm on my Dad's computer and forgot he has his own account.