The Day the Kids Stopped Going to School

(or) The Story of the Truant Strike

Alec had had it.

The Parkland massacre had happened 3 months ago; another troubled kid walked into his high school with a gun and shot up dozens of his classmates. And nothing had changed. Nothing ever changed. This was the fourth school shooting Alec could remember. There had been dozens more in the 2 years since he’d started high school, but these days only the “big ones” still made national news.

Christ it was hard enough being a teenager. Alec was already so insecure and terrified of everything. Grades, acne, practice, trying to hide his random mid-class boners. Why did he also have to feel like going to third period math was the most dangerous situation he could put himself in?

Every time another shooting made the news, he would see celebrities get on TV at awards shows and say something touching, or hear about a protest that sprouted up for a day or two downtown, but then things would go back to the way it had always been.

The dawn of a teenager is realizing that the world has problems, and school shootings were Alec’s sunrise.

This epiphany inspired Alec to take action. Be the change you want to see in the world and all that. But it seemed like at every turn adults would just ignore him, or shoot down his ideas.

He tried angry-tweeting about it. He would @ reply to Tomi Lahren, but she never responded (like all the other girls in his life) and he felt like he was five-years-old again yelling at his older sister to get off the phone so he could use the internet.

He tried speaking about it. After Parkland his high school student council organized a walkout like so many other schools across the country. Even though he was only a sophomore, they had asked Alec to say something in the parking lot. Alec thought about what he was going to say all week. He had a speech prepared and everything. But then the morning of the walkout the adults stood arm-in-arm in the hallway to prevent them from going outside.

“This is some kind of fire hazard isn’t it?” Alec asked the vice principal, as the kids were ushered back into their classrooms.

He was always a smart ass like that.

Alec couldn’t understand it. Maybe his ideas weren’t the best, but it’s not like the adults were doing any better on their own. He would hear talking heads droning on TV about the issue, arguing about whether it was a “gun control problem” or a “mental healthcare problem” but no solutions were ever seriously debated. No ideas were ever tested. But the weird thing to Alec was that everyone agreed there was, in fact, a problem.

Oh it’s definitely a problem! I just don’t agree with your idea of trying to solve it.

Throughout his entire education, Alec had been taught that every problem has a solution, and the only way to solve a problem is to try different solutions until you find one that works. If adults were the ones who educated him, why weren’t they applying that theory to this particular problem? If kids couldn’t rely on adults to save them, who could they rely on?

Something needed to be done. Not necessarily anything drastic, but something real. Trying something that fails is better than doing nothing, because at least then you know what doesn’t work.

So one day Alec decided he would stop going to school.

He didn’t know exactly why. He didn’t have an end goal in mind. He just felt like doing something he could control.

At first his parents weren’t on board. They argued with him, but this was nothing new. They threatened to ground him, which ironically worked in his favor. They tried appealing to his concern for his future welfare.

Think about what it will be like to be a high school dropout.

What will you do without a college degree?

Alec told them college was a waste of money. He could get all the education he needed from the Internet, and he wanted to become an electrician anyways. It costs way less, pays six figures, is in tremendously in-demand, and only requires a GED. “Plus I get to be in a union,” Alec added. “And the way Social Security is going, that pension is the best retirement account I can count on.” When Alec’s parents started wrapping their heads around the idea of not having to shell out an extra 40k per year, they started to come around.

After a few days Alec started receiving texts from friends who noticed his absence.

Where u at?

Whatsup man? You feelin okay?

Alec told them he was feeling fine thank you, he just preferred to not fear for his life every time he went to school. After all, adults strike all the time when they’re in a dangerous work environment, why can’t students?

After a week the school started calling. They threatened him with truancy. Alec told them to go right ahead and truant him, whatever that meant. He has no intention to go back.

Word started to spread. For the first time in his life, people started talking about Alec. He became the Truant Kid, the one who stopped coming to class, the one who was on strike against education. One morning Alec got a text from his friend Robbie.

Yo. I’m on strike too.

Slowly more and more kids stopped showing up to class. It was easier than they expected, you just had to not go to school. No one could force you to do otherwise.

By the end of the week, there were notably less kids in class. Someone tipped off a reporter about what was happening, and one night the local TV station called Alec and asked him for a comment. He told them the same thing he told everyone else.

We shouldn’t fear going to school. Something has to change, or we’re not going to keep putting ourselves in dangerous situations.

The next day half the sophomore class was absent.

Alec’s phone started blowing up like he had just signed a max rookie deal. Everyone wanted to tell him they had heard him on TV, to tell him that they weren’t going to school either.

Instead of replying to every text, Alec started a Reddit group so he could talk to everyone who was striking at once, and that’s when things went bananas.

All over the country kids started dropping out of high school. Nobody rushes into a fad like teenagers, and this one was so simple and impactful that it caught on like a California wildfire. Talk of the Truant Strike (as it became known) took over Facebook. It dominated everyone’s Twitter and Instagram feeds, and then the adults started talking about it. Alec started to get so many calls and DMs from the talking heads on TV that he eventually had to mute all notifications on his cell. Now he was the one ignoring Tomi Lahren. How ironic.

But the students didn’t just sit on their asses. Striking was only the first step. These iGens were too inspired, too upset with the world to sit still. They traveled to visit each other in different cities. They learned about stuff they had always been interested in, but that their schools didn’t teach. They mixed music and released mixtapes on SoundCloud. They learned how to knit and sold sweaters on Etsy. They built prototypes of sustainable internal combustion engines. Some of them even started conducting classes of their own.

Economists started talking about the Truant economy. Some reported that kids who participated in the strike were earning more than graduates coming out of college.

6 months after Alec first stopped going to class, 80% of all high school eligible students were no longer going to school.

The Truant Strike became the largest unorganized labor movement in American history. There was no agenda. No collective bargaining agreement. Just a simple demand that something be done.

When the teamsters decided to strike in solidarity with the students politicians were finally forced to confront the issue, because the only thing a politician fears more than losing donors is pissing off the unions. Alec’s congresswoman called and offered to fly him Washington so he could be part of the legislative discussion, but he declined.

I’m just a kid, it’s not my time run the world yet.

Things started slowly. At first there was a lot of bad blood and a lot of distrust, but the idea of losing tomorrow’s generation, of being responsible for ending the modern education system, compelled them to keep moving forward.

Change didn’t happen all at once. There was no single bill that could be passed, no magic panacea that was suddenly discovered. Like any complex problem, the best way to solve it was to look at it in different dimensions. They implemented new ideas to address each dimension. They agreed upon method of judging success, and objectively measured the effects of each idea. Some ideas worked. Most didn’t. There was no public shaming if someone’s idea didn’t work. No name calling on Twitter if there was a disagreement. For once, the adults behaved like adults.

Eventually, gun-related deaths started to go down. School shootings became fewer and fewer. Cops killed less civilians. And for the first time in fifty years, suicides started to decline. Kids began trickling back to into the classroom. After all, some of them had to become doctors, lawyers and engineers.

Alec never went back

Good to his word, he enrolled in electrician’s school. Like all other internet celebrities, he slowly faded back into anonymity. These days he focuses mostly on gaining his IBEW certification. You can still occasionally get him to talk about the Truant Strike (especially after he’s had a few beers) but he prefers to talk football. He may not have a high school or college degree, but he did something. He made a difference, and even if he doesn’t have an award to show for it, at least he’s got that union pension.