Editorial: Why we cannot ignore the truants

OPINION: LOST TRIBE - it has a nice, almost romantic feel to it. It evokes an image of a group of people tracked by a modern-day Indiana Jones, a long-lost primitive civilisation obscured by dense forest and mountain ranges and only very rarely revealed when the mist rolls back and the mountain relents.

In New Zealand the reality is brutally different. There is no primitive band of people skirting our remote highlands and teasing us with glimpses of a way of life usually carried to us in whispers and wild stories.

In New Zealand, our "lost tribe" is not romantic; it is a clever euphemism to describe the few souls among us who are lost to the education system but who will invariably graduate to be our next murderers, rapists and thieves.

Spare us your waggers and bunkers – we have all at one point or another taken the odd day or two off school to recharge the batteries and seek refuge from the education system's cruellest blows.

But 2500 young people who either regularly miss school or are not even enrolled should not be dismissed as a lost tribe of truants or poor unfortunates who have fallen through the cracks, because they are our future leaders – of major crime.

They are the future underclass for whom the knowledge that is power has, for one reason or another, been denied them, so they will take that power for themselves and by their own violent terms.

The Government is right to target the hard-core truants and the soft underbelly of poor parenting that spawns this so-called lost tribe of potential misfits and malcontents, who will swap the rules and teachings of the classroom for those of the street and the criminal justice system.

If it takes $32 million to help keep these kids at school and away from less savoury diversions, then that will be money well spent.

If that mere drop in the education budget keeps a William Bell in school a little longer and away from more murderous motivations, then it will have saved money and lives.

Of course, nothing is quite that simple and education is just one brick in the path that leads to a person's future. But taken as part of the Government's approach in targeting our most at-risk young people and families, then it is a wise use of taxpayer funds. And certainly no worse than the many millions that will probably be spent trying to explain and justify the implementation of national standards.

The normal convention is that you don't waste good money on bad, but money spent now could mean a great deal more saved down the line. And lives transformed by the genuine power of knowledge.

- © Fairfax NZ News