Blaming the Victims

TORONTO — Students in Ontario are the first in Canada to run the risk of losing
their driving privileges if they drop out of school before the age of 18 under new legislation passed Tuesday in the provincial legislature.

This is senseless. When the idea was first floated I wrote a letter to my MPP expressing my disagreement with the proposal. I worked many years for an MPP and know where such correspondence goes so my spending time on such a futile exercise was a barometer of the profundity of my opinion on the issue. Some kids can't continue on in school for whatever reason. Maybe they have a learning disability and can't get the help they need from their teachers or their parents. Perhaps they know a little bit about cars and they're able to line up a job that might make them feel good about themselves after a frustrating school experience. We need to be giving our kids more and better options, not taking them away.
Gerard Kennedy, the Education Minister at the time who was responsible for drafting this useless piece of legislation lost any respect I might have had for him. There are reasons why kids drop out of school and taking away their right to drive doesn't begin to address them