Honor roll student jailed for truancy

A little over a week ago I came across an article about a girl that was thrown in jail for a day because of her numerous absences in High School, also known as "truancy". Here are the highlights:

• Diane Tran, 17, thrown in jail for one night because of repeated absences from school

• Honors student has been working two jobs to keep family afloat since parents' divorce

• Has been taking advanced placement and college courses in addition to jobs and missed school due to exhaustion

• Spent the night in jail for truancy

School is a service. Money (Via taxes, tuition, fees, etc.) is given to institutions to serve our kids. The school is providing a service to the children that attend. Imagine how screwed we would be if Apple could throw us in jail if we didn't visit iTunes regularly enough. The law/rule/regulation of truancy should not exist. If kids do not want to take 4 years of high school they should not be compelled to.

For the sake of argument let's follow the reasoning that says schools should be allowed to compel children to consume their services.

The judge makes a case that he can't allow exceptions. Many people have echoed this saying, "If you don't punish her then you have to make case by case decisions about how the law is applied! This would lead to madness!" We have to remember this is Sparta.

But seriously, it is clear the truancy law was made strictly for lazy students that suck at life. That's the spirit or intent of the truancy law. Clearly this girl doesn't fit that criteria but  was thrown in jail because legislators didn't think of every possibility. Add the fact that courts literally handle infractions case by case and person by person, not in large herds of people who committed the same crime. It's hard to give credibility to the judges remarks. To allow an exception here would not be a violation of the law but its intended enforcement.

We don't need better laws, we need wiser people (I said wiser, not smarter). I notice when people say they want better laws they really mean they want more stipulations. The problem is that it is impossible to think of every possibility before it happens which is why you need administrators of the law to have wisdom to react to what is happening in front of them. Otherwise you have outcomes like this one, where an extremely responsible young lady is jailed for being irresponsible.

Planning for every exception hardly ever works, here's an entertaining video making my case. Skip to 2:00 and listen until 3:41.
Afterburner with Bill Whittle: The Train Set

Let's not outsmart our common sense.