Clearly I could be accused of sticking my oar in here due to the fact
that our now adult children never opted in to the school system, but
society as a whole benefits from education, including school.
Here in England and Wales parents whose children attend school are
fined for taking them on
term time holidays (vacations). I find this
peculiar because my recollection of holidays is that I learnt a lot
more
on them than at school. Even so, presumably pupils occasionally
learn
things there, which is a good thing and gives us buildings which take
a
while to fall over and surgery which doesn't always kill people, and I
think we would agree that this is a Good Thing.
This, then, is my proposal. Before going on holiday, families submit
a
plan to the school which describes the learning aims and objectives
of
the holiday. The school then records the content of the missed
lessons. On returning from holiday, the children are tested on what
they've picked up - foreign language phrases, cuisine, cultural and
economic knowledge, geography, biology and so on. When these
topics are later encountered in the curriculum, the pupils are given
tuition in the subjects they have missed instead of the topics
concerned. This won't work perfectly due to building on knowledge
which has been missed due to absence, but it will be better than
nothing.