Should we punish the children, the parents or the teachers for truancy? Or is there a different way of looking at the problem?

The mythical monster grew two heads every time one was cut off, and it took Hercules to realize that the only way it could be destroyed was by striking at the root of the Hydra’s immortality. Yet we in the twenty-first century still seem not to have learnt this basic lesson, preferring to treat symptoms rather than cause.

Take drugs, for instance, which we have recognized is a serious problem. We agonize over whether to punish the drug barons, the street pushers, or the users. However many people are imprisoned, the monster will simply grow more heads. Police and justice systems creak and groan under the weight of detecting and prosecuting street criminals. Many suspects are never brought to trial because of inadequate administration procedures. Even if more successful prosecutions were possible, the prison service could not accommodate thousands more inmates.

These are complex issues, and root causes are not easily identified. Perhaps truancy, now reaching epidemic proportions, is a simpler case. The answer, we are told, is to punish or reward the parents, the children, or the schools. Will this kill the Hydra?

Drugs, street crime and truancy have been with us for millennia, because we are imperfect human beings. You might think that such problems, as we evolve, would tend to diminish; the fact that they are all escalating means we have to look beyond the frailties of human nature. I suggest they have the same root cause: dissatisfaction. If we were fulfilled and contented the drug barons would go out of business.

It is not easy to change the behavior of adults addicted to drugs and crime, but if we would change society we should start with the children. How do we dissuade them from destructive lifestyles? How do we persuade them that education is worthwhile?

Children are exposed as never before to a kaleidoscope of images, all imprinting to produce a confused view of the world. There is little to protect children from adult behavior, although a child does not have the emotional development to understand. In the main these images are accompanied by negative messages, so it is not surprising that children develop negative views on life.

Entertainment moves ever nearer to realism. We do not want to see an actor pretend, we want to see a real person being really scared, or humiliated. We want to see real people behaving badly and getting away with it. This is the adult world as seen by children. Intelligence, sensitivity, kindness, are not qualities we seem to value.

If a child can rise above this, he can anticipate a stressful or boring job that will not cover a mortgage. Even when we find a hero, we can’t wait for him to fail in some minor way so that he can be ridiculed and tossed on the rubbish heap. If that is all the child can look forward to there is little incentive to attend school. Why not start behaving badly straight away?

Society is not imposed on us, it is created from within. Standards are not now set by rulers and religious leaders but by ordinary people as we reward newspapers and television producers who appeal to our basic instincts. If that is the world we want then we can expect drugs, crime and truancy to flourish. Oscar Wilde asked whether art copied life, or life copied art, but there can be no doubt that children copy what is presented to them as entertainment and adult behavior.

Even with the realization that cutting off the heads was not enough, it still required Hercules to kill the Hydra. Likewise, if we accept that reward and punishment is not the whole answer, it will take a Herculean effort to put a positive spin on life and give us the society we want.