During this session, the Colorado Legislature will consider repealing the state's compulsory education law.

This deserves a serious look. One of the reasons public schools don't educate our children is that teachers spend so much time with discipline problems that they have little time left to teach. By simply not forcing the bad apples into school, those disruptive types will gladly stay away, and the learning atmosphere will improve overnight.

Everyone agrees that you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. Yet the present law ignores this wisdom and tries not to just lead, but force kids into school AND make them learn. A horse that isn't thirsty won't drink, and a kid that isn't interested won't learn.

What he will do is get so mad at being cooped up all day that he will make trouble all day. So much trouble that other children, who want to learn, are kept from learning. This is profoundly unfair to the good students.

In fact, the bad students are driving out the good ones. A recent study, reported in both Denver newspapers, indicated that in high-crime neighborhoods, one out of three students had cut classes or stayed away from school because of fear of crime. Yet advocates of the status-quo want the bad ones shut up with the good ones.

The newspaper headlines recently blared that the student suspension and expulsion rates just shot up 46 percent in Colorado, due to the wise action of the Legislature requiring that the schools get rid of trouble-makers.

Doesn't is seem inconsistent to first have a law that forces every child into school, and then to have another law that forces teachers to throw out the bad apples? Why round them up and put them in school, and then throw them out? Why not just repeal the compulsory education requirement and save all the trouble?

Why do schools want the troublemakers? Why would a school under pressure to provide better education want the kids that will keep them from providing it? Why drag them in, wait just long enough for them to disrupt classes, and then throw them out?

The reason for keeping kids penned up is rather unsavory. School districts want the bad kids forced into school so their head counts stay high. More warm bodies in school mean more funding, and to hell with education.

Butsay those who want to turn each school into a sort of daytime prisonif you let the bad ones out, they will get into trouble. Studies show, however, that juvenile delinquency rates are not appreciably higher during the simmer, when school is out. So the effect of letting them out during the winter would be minor.

Besides, most crime happens at night. Schools aren't open at night. So on the face of it, schools are lousy crime fighters. If we really want to cut down on juvenile crime, we should skip midnight basketball and insist on midnight classes. Compulsory classes, of course.

The advocates of compulsory education claim that if we let the bad apples out of school, they will deal drugs, rape, steal, murder, and so on. If that is true, it's hard to believe that these advocates really want such hoodlums sitting side by side with well-behaved children.

But it isn't true. These advocates are only using a scare tactic. Most young adults who don't want to be in school want to get a job, not raise hell. Schools want compulsory education to keep those head counts nice and high.

Besides, the whole notion of compulsory education is absurd, for two reasons.

First, it's an oxymoron. Compulsory attendance, maybe, but not compulsory education. There is simply no way to ram civics and algebra into an unwilling brain.

Second, it's unenforceable. Schools are not built like prisons, nor should they be. Compulsory attendance, if taken seriously, would mean bars on the windows and guards at the doors, with warrants issued for those who "escaped" school. Is this the kind of school we want our children to attend?

Here is what we should tell children: "We have provided a good, orderly school. If you want an education, the taxpayers will give you oneeither now, or later, when you realize you need it."

Let them come to school when they want to learn.

It would be nice to have it both ways--keep the bad kids off the streets, at least during school hours, and give the good students a good education. But no school can both be a prison and an educational institution. We must choose which we want, because we can't have both.

Our schools should be centers of learning, not holding pens.

Dwight Filley is a Senior Fellow with the Independence Institute, a think-tank in Golden, Colorado.

Copyright 2000