Marisa Manley Quote

“Consider compulsory school-attendance laws, for instance. They fill government schools with children who don't want to be there. Some students are violent, attacking -- and even killing -- teachers and other students. Teachers must lock their classrooms to keep hoodlums at bay in the hallways. Thus, compulsory attendance laws, alleged to promote education, can make it almost impossible.”

~ Marisa Manley

Why Laws Backfire, The Freeman, p. 545, August 1996

Ratings and Comments


Mike, Norwalk

Compelled compulsion by a legal positivist system (carnal man being god with ability to create law) is a tyrannous state that not just promotes hoodlums at bay, it creates and protects them (local to national police, alphabet soup government agencies, judges, politicians, local bullies, trained maleficence, etc.) As to an educational experience, the quote is extremely accurate and on point.

cal, lewisville, tx

Compulsory school attendance simply provides teachers with a career and a paycheck with great retirement benefits. It also provides many parents with a babysitter where they get free breakfasts and lunches.

E Archer, NYC

That's one of the reasons my parents took me out of public school and put me into Catholic school. The public schools in our neighborhood were filled with bussed in kids who resented us and spent more time disturbing class with misbehavior than working. Invariably the class was split with the 'smarter' kids working on their own while the teachers dealt with the rest. It was like having a bad neighborhood bussed in and out everyday. It wasn't school, it was a giant social work project -- wait, I guess that IS school...

Mary-MI
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Mary-MI    1/11/19
Felipe, São Paulo

As a teacher, trying to teach Sciences in public schools in São Paulo, I can wholesomely confirm this quote. Such laws are so much detrimental to the idea of teaching, that abhors me that teachers are not rioting to get these laws down. On contrary, we just see public teachers rioting when it comes to their pay-checks health (payment that, if were being honest, WE DO NOT DESERVE, since we aren't teaching anyone anything for a long time now... Cal's comment is on point here).
Now, get these compulsory attendance laws and mix them with compulsory APPROVAL laws. Yes, you heard me right, compulsory approval. Those laws are in and out here, but in practice we cannot hold back any student who failed the year. The results to this, combined with compulsory attendance, you all can imagine. A whole generation, all the attending years in our school systems, consistently ignoring teachers and their learning processes. "Students" who can't barely read, who don't care if they will ever learn to read or to put 2 + 2 together, creating all kinds of havoc in our classrooms. No wonder Brazil is now figuring as the only country where mean IQ has dropped in the recent decades. Where really messing shit up.

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