Let your child skip school to hunt?
12-15-2010, 10:29 AM
#31
Typical Buck
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: Where animals get eaten
Posts: 671
if they are doing well i dont see why not,after all isnt hunting a learning experiance in its self?like that saying,everything is good,in moderation.the best way to learn things is threw experiance and i do not live life for the dallor sign but instead for what life has to offer.and because of the way i live my life i still get my 5 weeks a year of hunting in.gotta work smarter not harder.thank god im not a sheep!
12-15-2010, 10:32 AM
#32
Guest
Posts: n/a
I am not saying you HAVE to skip school in order to learn these skills. You taught yourself, good for you. Me too, and still learning. I'd rather have been taught by my father. And I'm saying that it's the DAD's prerogative to take his kid out of school to hunt if he wants. I do NOT surrender the right, will and future of my children to the state. In Virginia, you cannot hunt on Sundays...could be like that in other states. Maybe this guy doesn't have a place nearby to hunt. Maybe the dad wants to take his kid hunting somewhere where travel time is significant and it would eat up a lot of the hunting day. Who knows? Again, my point is that it's up to the dad.
Are you REALLY going to bring up the bow vs. gun thing here? Really? "
Again, for someone calling my view a “freakin’ stretch,” you’re bringing this to extremes all over the place. You are making correlations that SIMPLY DO NOT EXIST. What you are basically inferring is that a dad who takes his kid out of school to go hunting, skiing, family vacation…WHATEVER…is teaching his kid to be undisciplined, implying that his son won’t go to college, won’t be able to differentiate between what is more important than hunting, and what is not, etc. If you weren’t implying that, then bringing up the earnings and employability of college grads vs non-grads is IRRELEVANT, along with the stories of your friends. You have stated that for both you and your friends, you were obsessed with hunting well beyond the point of reason. You cannot correlate that with a kid missing a couple of days of school to go hunting!!!!
No one is saying that hunting never has to wait, or that hunting is the most important thing ever. You are imagining that people are saying that.
12-15-2010, 10:53 AM
#33
Nontypical Buck
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: Virginia
Posts: 1,473
Nobody is crying, and you didn't hit a nerve. Just pointing out that your statements are inapplicable. Sorry, I can't comprehend an extraneous train of thought...something unfortunately that can't be fixed by school.
12-15-2010, 11:01 AM
#34
Guest
Posts: n/a
Everything is pertinent no matter if you are able to see it or not. This cannot be learned in school, but more experience.
I am just pointing out how my statements are applicable. You don't see it, and that does not surprise me. Its really no big deal.
12-15-2010, 11:47 AM
#37
Nontypical Buck
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Lubbock, Texas
Posts: 1,401
I plan on taking my son out of school for at least a week in the fall when he is old enough to hunt unless for some reason he is struggling to get by in school or something.
Somehow I think spending a week in the mountains hunting elk with his dad will stick with him longer in life than spending a week in history class.
I rarely missed any school and got in plenty of hunting as well, and my mother always stressed that good grades were money in the bank and that turned out to be true when it came time to apply to college, but I think with a little work you can have your cake and eat it too.
I think teaching a kid to plan ahead and get his assignments done and take care of business for taking a week off of school is a very important lesson that will actually benefit them in the long run.
Somehow I think spending a week in the mountains hunting elk with his dad will stick with him longer in life than spending a week in history class.
I rarely missed any school and got in plenty of hunting as well, and my mother always stressed that good grades were money in the bank and that turned out to be true when it came time to apply to college, but I think with a little work you can have your cake and eat it too.
I think teaching a kid to plan ahead and get his assignments done and take care of business for taking a week off of school is a very important lesson that will actually benefit them in the long run.
12-15-2010, 11:49 AM
#38
Fork Horn
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Ontario, Canada
Posts: 414
Do you, or would you, let your child skip a day of school to go deer hunting?
My teenage boy wants to go but do to travel time requirements, I would have to let him skip school for one day during the first firearms season and one or two days during the second season. He gets decent grades, having a 3.5 GPA for the first year and a half of high school but several of his A's have been the just barely type and my wife and I are concerned that taking time off would have a negative impact. I should also note that he is on the block schedule where everything is compressed into half the time. This means that every day missed is the equivalent of two days missed for the subjects he is taking at that time.
In addition to the grade thing, I don't want to send the message that he should knock off school (or in later years, work) if there is something that he would rather be doing - even though hunting is a great life experience.
So what would you all do? I appreciate your thoughts on the matter.
My teenage boy wants to go but do to travel time requirements, I would have to let him skip school for one day during the first firearms season and one or two days during the second season. He gets decent grades, having a 3.5 GPA for the first year and a half of high school but several of his A's have been the just barely type and my wife and I are concerned that taking time off would have a negative impact. I should also note that he is on the block schedule where everything is compressed into half the time. This means that every day missed is the equivalent of two days missed for the subjects he is taking at that time.
In addition to the grade thing, I don't want to send the message that he should knock off school (or in later years, work) if there is something that he would rather be doing - even though hunting is a great life experience.
So what would you all do? I appreciate your thoughts on the matter.
12-15-2010, 11:57 AM
#39
Spike
Thread Starter
Join Date: Dec 2010
Location: Illinois
Posts: 53
Thank you all for your responses. Reading through them, it's amazing to me how the diversity of responses pretty much replicates the war that is going on in my own mind.
One thing that came to mind since I posed the question, is the fact that missing a day of school may impact his grades that are on the margin, however, it would probably have little or no impact on his ACT or SAT scores for college admission. So I suppose the bigger issue is, would I be impacting his work ethic down the road. Sure one day is no big deal, but one day can lead to two, and for all I know, he may then take a week off from college to go elk hunting out west without us even knowing it. Conversely, he may relish that one day and take no more than that down the road. Who knows the future?
One thing I will say, my son is a hard worker. Like many boys, he needs a little nudge on the homework front once in a while, but once he's kick-started, he stays with it. Also, he has caddied four days a week at the nearby country club since the age of 13 and willingly gets up at 5:30am so that he can be one of the first ones on the list. But still ... there's this lingering fear in my mind that I'm starting a new precedent that may negatively impact him for years to come. Sure it's only one day, but like the old pulpit preachers say, one drink most surely leads to two.
One thing that came to mind since I posed the question, is the fact that missing a day of school may impact his grades that are on the margin, however, it would probably have little or no impact on his ACT or SAT scores for college admission. So I suppose the bigger issue is, would I be impacting his work ethic down the road. Sure one day is no big deal, but one day can lead to two, and for all I know, he may then take a week off from college to go elk hunting out west without us even knowing it. Conversely, he may relish that one day and take no more than that down the road. Who knows the future?
One thing I will say, my son is a hard worker. Like many boys, he needs a little nudge on the homework front once in a while, but once he's kick-started, he stays with it. Also, he has caddied four days a week at the nearby country club since the age of 13 and willingly gets up at 5:30am so that he can be one of the first ones on the list. But still ... there's this lingering fear in my mind that I'm starting a new precedent that may negatively impact him for years to come. Sure it's only one day, but like the old pulpit preachers say, one drink most surely leads to two.
12-15-2010, 12:17 PM
#40
Typical Buck
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Central Ohio
Posts: 768
every year my dad takes off and he and i go for the first 3 days. granted i only have school two of those days. but i dont seen anything wrong with it as long as they can maintain their grades. there has been a couple years when i didnt have the grades to go.