A gentleman by the name of Fabian Tassano is justifiably angry about the raising of the compulsory school-leaving age to 18 years. Quite so. Arguably – and I do argue – the school-leaving age should be cut. Many teenagers, including the brightest, are bored stiff at school and their boredom leads to many of the disciplinary problems we see around us. Better, perhaps, to let teenagers work, discover the value of money, and then pick up their education when some of that youthful energy has already been channelled into a payslip. This has been the argument from a number of liberal educationalists, such as Prof. James Tooley, for years. Such a view horrifies the power-freaks in the political establishment who would probably like us all to stay in education until the age of 30, but the trend towards an ever-higher school/college-leaving age cannot go on.
Reading some history, it does seem as though we live in an age when in some ways, youngsters seem to stay young for much longer than used to be the case. By the time my old man was 18, he had already become an officer cadet in the RAF and by the age of 21, was navigating fast jet aircraft. One of my great uncles joined the naval academy at Dartmouth by the age of 15. The average age of many pilots in WW2 was 21. Now, if you believe the educationalists of today, a person aged 18 is not fit to put in charge of an electric toothbrush, and yet at the same time, things like the age of sexual consent have been reduced. So in some ways people are thought to be more mature, in other ways, less so.
I am a bit miffed that Tassano moans that Samizdata has had nothing to say on this issue. Had he been reading this blog in January, he would have seen that we were on the case, thanks to Alice Bachini. Pay attention, Fabian.
I oppose all forms of state conscription, be it military, judicial or educational.
Go back a little further and you will find teenagers commanding warships. (For a literary reference, try Mr Midshipman Hornblower and the chapter called IIRC The Cargo of Rice).
The reason the statists want to keep people in education until their majority is so they can make sure the conditioning has taken. They think more control is a solution to the problem of unruly teenagers, they couldn’t be more wrong. The ubnruly teenagers are rebelling (as teenagers are wont to do) against a a system which tries to pigeonhole them into specific economic roles far to soon. My stepdaughter has just chosen her standard grades (at 12, who knows what they want to do with the rest of their lives at 12?) and her choices were even more restricted than mine were 18 years ago (and I got an extra year to figure out what I wnated to do with the rest of my life, not that it helped much).
I’m beginning to see how subtle the slide towards a totally planned economy is under our current government. Instead of dictating each person’s role in the economy by order, we are allowed the illusion of being able to choose where we fit. We are made to choose so early, however, that by the time we’re mature enough t really think about the role we want to play in society its too late, we’re qualified to do one job and no others.
This drift towards totalitarianism is not purely in the legislation, or the erosion of our freedom, it starts as soon as we go to school.
One of the most influential people in my life was a teacher who was extremely good at his job and had a love of education that I don’t think the mandarins in gov’t would understand. He told me wonething which has stayed with me throughout my life; “No-one can be taught, you can only encourage them to learn.” It seems that our glorious leaders have decided that this encouragement should be in the form of punishment if we refuse to comply. Will such refusal be noted in a criminal record? This stinks of control-freakery of the highest order.
No doubt ID cards will eventually hold data on our qualifications and which jobs we are allowed to do.
What strikes me is how heartless it is.
Surely the people thinking up these proposals must have thought of the misery endured by so many children at school for so many years—the blank faces, fiddling hands, barely suppressed rage and growing bitterness. Maybe they did think of this misery and thought to increase it.
What it shows is how easy it is to get someone to support a coercive proposal on the grounds that it is for a third party’s “own good”. I got het up about this in Jan, so if you find comparisons to slavery fatuous don’t go here.
mandrill, you have a good point about being encouraged to love learning. It’s that hunger that makes learning so exhilirating at times. I was lucky enough to do my MSc at Birkbeck College, where because most students are mature and part time, their enthusiasm and diligence when it comes to their degrees is much much greater than it is amongst the students of other universities.
Poor lambs – unfair criticism from two major sources in short succession: Bryan Appleyard, and now me. Seriously, I’m a big big fan of your site, and I have to confess I missed the January contribution, but I’m not convinced the Bacchini article (“might seem reasonable”, “just wondering” – and why did it take someone from Texas?) constitutes the kind of outrage I was looking for. Now GH’s “slaves to the state” and PdH’s “state conscription” I like.
How about helping to start a campaign along the lines of NO2ID, guys? Though my own contribution has to be small I’m afraid due to pressure of time. As I said chez Worstall, I actually think this is a more serious breach of civil liberties than ID cards. Once you establish that it’s okay to override the wishes of individuals who (on some definitions) are considered adult, even when it’s not about preventing harm, you’ve started down a very undesirable slippery slope.
I was bored stupid at school.
The national curriculum was easy enough and so much was just memorizing facts that I rarely paid attention in class. Except chemistry, and that was only because the teacher ignored the curriculum!
Fabian, we don’t all do furious outrage on every post as after a while we have developed a sort of sullen weariness. Plus my blood pressure could not stand being in a permanent state of fury about Blair/Dave the Windmill or whatever.
As for Alice being in Texas, well, sometimes it is actually better to get a non-UK perspective. We have folk who contribute around the globe. That’s a strength of this site, not a weakness.
Alice may live in The Lone Star State now but she is a Brit expat and hardcore home schooler.
I think this ruling is because if they’re in FT education untill 18 they’re not classed as unemployed
Ive never really understood why kids who don’t want to be there and aren’t intrested are forced to learn history, geography, or even science. Why can’t they be allowed to learn skills they may actually use in a day realese type scheme from 14, with them only being ‘forced’ to learn english and maths.
Keep everyone in some kind of full time “Education” until they are 21 and you reduce youth unemployment to zero at a stroke. In fact it is physically impossible to be unemployed.
Another government target met then…
Oh and because it will be impossible for anyone who still wants to learn to do so given all the discipline problems from those that don’t then lets dumb down the exams so it’s impossible to fail.
Another government target met then…
Here we go again!
More back of an envelope “thinking” from our brilliant Government.
Mandrill mentions the early age that children are forced to make life choices.
I had one to make even earlier. I was one of the last generation to take the 11 plus exam. This separated the academic goats from the non academic sheep roughly 20% to 80%. Now we can argue that eleven is too young to make such a choice, not all children mature at the same rate or age.
But the positive effect that the 11plus had on primary and Junior education was to put pressure on teachers to have their pupils up to reading , writing and maths standards that would enable them to at least sit the exam even if they did not pass it.
Now with no selection there is no pressure and illiteracy levels are soaring.
My great grandfather was a private school headmaster who got Nationalised in 1870, but my grandfather and father left school at 14, fully literate and numerate with copperplate handwriting. Gramp apprenticed to an ironmonger and my dad to help run the family business.Keeping either in school longer would have been a waste of time.
As will trying to keep the ASBO Massive hanging around for two extra years so they can further destroy the education of those very few who actually want to learn these days.
Besides, how will they enforce it? A third of all pupils in British schools are already truanting at any one time.
Interesting remark, Perry, about opposing state conscription whether military, educational or judicial. Should we infer that you oppose obligatory jury service? I’m not sure what else that can mean.
Points taken about signal habituation and effect of ranting on personal health, Johnathan.
*goes off to check blood pressure*
And I wasn’t meaning to disparage Alice Bachini or her post, which I thought was interesting.
All I’m saying is: is anyone willing to (help) organise a campaign about this issue which will be at least as high profile as ID cards?
And I do appreciate the link, thank you.
But Jonathan, surely you’re forgetting all of those who will benefit from this move, to whit:
The Unions – whose members will now come under less lower wage pressure from 16 year olds
The Teachers – who now have an even larger compulsory audience to draw sustenance from
The Local Authorities – who now have a mandated reason to increase their taxes and their payrolls yet further to fund and man all of these wonderful new brainwashing prisons, sorry, educational wonderlands
The three groups above also probably contain about 95% of the Labour Party’s activist members, which is a hilarious coincidence no doubt, unless of course you’re one of those now dragooned for yet more porridge supporting their salaries and state pensions with two of the best years of your life.
And no doubt, despite 4 roll-calls a day, electronic fences, video surveillance, tagging, control orders, on-the-spot fines from a soon-to-be-introduced Gestapo Schools Police, increased crime from bored drugged-up delinquent teenagers who can’t get jobs and yet who won’t attend these boredom factories, plus sundry other de-civilising effects, none of the idiots in the Labour Party will ever come to think this was a really stupid idea.
Yes, Britain truly is becoming a Gulag state.
But what’s really funny about this is it’s being brought in by someone who left school at 15 to go packing shelves at Tescos. And now this same Alan Johnson is a Cabinet Minister. Didn’t seem to do him any harm? Or maybe it did. Perhaps if he’d left school even earlier he wouldn’t have been such a moron.
Jack, I am not forgetting the beneficiaries! I take that as a given. All those 800,000 new public sector jobs etc.
Fabian, no offence taken.
On the ID issue, I assume you are familiar with Guy Herbert’s efforts.
It seems to me that the type of kids who are unable to handle the “boredom” of school without becoming discipline problems are unlikely to do very well in the types of jobs that tend to be available for 16 year olds with no education.
The drum that should be beaten here is that once a child has been taught common languages (the three r’s, reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic) they have the underlying tools necessary to compete. Anything beyond that involves philosophy. I believe that by the fourth grade, a child has basic skills to read, write and do basic math. Given that, and the reality that there is a finite world with limitations, a child has the basics necessary to function. How that foundation is used is up to the parents and the child himself.
I think even an eight year old understands when they are being given a watered down, politically correct, obliquely collectivist set of principals. Most minds reject it. But time must be served. And of course there are enough minds who adore it, and so the next generation of bureaucrats are born, and the rest learn to serve superficially and remain quiet.
As it stands, broadcast education at the more advanced levels, is bland and shorn of any true philosophy (other than the adoration of the State without any real definitions of what comprises its function). If a person does not have some sense of meaning and worth found/instilled by, say twelve, they will likely not find one. The flacid, proto-bureaucratic system wins by default.
It is not just the very bright kids who are bored who are affected. Pupils for whom academia is a waste of time would clearly be better off doing some work and maybe, later in life, getting some education.
You put inverted commas around the “boredom” of schooling but the sneer quotes are unjustified. For many youngsters, the boredom is not a figment of their imagination but only too real.
What will happen next? Compulsory Uni? Since they’ve broadened Uni to include flower-arranging and origami and other fun courses, what’s the problem? You want to be served by well-rounded people who are multi-skilled, don’t you? And with all those European Languages being given equal status, you’ll need a few degrees just to speak to your taxi-driver and any servants you have. Our lazy Australian Government just lets people get jobs when they want, with no Uni degree required!
P.S. Another reason the Liberals lost in our State elections- The leader, Mr. Debnam, looks remarkably like Frank Spencer. Are you missing a Frank Spencer in the UK?
All through my high-school years, my father would often cite me in conversation with guests, etc. He would point right at me as if I weren’t even there and tell people, “That boy is living testament to the folly of compulsory education. He’s not getting a goddamned thing from it, and his time would be far better spent at working at a real job.” Of course, he knew me quite well, and understood that I was bored shitless and not learning a thing.
I never objected to his bug-on-a-pin presentation of the matter, because he was right as rain.
I was robbed.
It seems to me that the type of kids who are unable to handle the “boredom” of school without becoming discipline problems are unlikely to do very well in the types of jobs that tend to be available for 16 year olds with no education.
As was pointed out in a similar thread here a bit ago – no education? What went on the first 11-12 years? If a person is not fit to assume some level responsibility, or at the very least an apprenticeship, at a real job, albeit entry level, then that itself is condemnation enough of the educational system. If it is the last two years that has all the educational goodness, why the hell wait so long? Again, it is control of the masses to benefit those enumerated above. It is estimated that it costs, on average, $7,000 per year to educate a child. After an investment of $84,000, a person is still uneducated?
Does this mean all people are fully educated at 16? No. But for those tasks that have to filled by someone, and likely not somebody with a Masters in Mideval Literature, the basics plus some degree of specific education/skill learning, most likely in the market, is certainly enough.
And is it better to be bored and mildly productive, or bored and a burden?
Raise the leaving age to 18? Why do we even have compulsory education? Why is it provided by the state?
I know the answers but sadly the majority of the British people have proven themselves blind to these.
However, if we must have these things, the leaving age should be lowered. Let those who wish to do so skip their GCSEs, thus removing disruptive elements from the lessons of those who have a desire to learn academically. Those who don’t can then continue in some vocational activity such as an apprenteship or start working. Perhaps some will realise they would like an education and go back to school. Others will be happy and many will succeed and do very well. Of course, any who end up intimidating people on street corners and burning out cars should fothwith be taken to the busiest public place within walking distance, shackled to a board or wall, and lashed a number of times equal to the length of their baseball cap in centimeters.
I joined the Army the day I turned 17 because I had been denied graduation for lack of 2.5 credits, the equivalent of half a semester class, because my attitude was wrong. Lois Hornbostle, lacking 5 credits, was allowed to graduate.
Of course I carried newspapers at 11 and janitored and pearl dove from 13.
But Jonathan, surely you’re forgetting all of those who will benefit from this move, to whit:
Mr P,
My apologies. In my haste to get something down, I should’ve written:
But Jonathan, surely we’re forgetting those who will benefit from this move, to whit:
I should’ve paid more attention to my writing skills in all those dreary English lessons on Browning (surely the world’s dullest poet)
Please keep up the great work! 🙂
rgds,
jm.
It is less difficult to learn when one is young. Not just learn informantion or how to do things, but also to learn ways of thinking and acting.
People can only learn how to work when they start work. If someone says in school and college too long the world of work is a hard shock indeed. A quite different “life style” is required.
Also there is the modern practice of putting people straight from formal education into senior positions. They are not suitable for these positions as they lack experience – they do not know what to do or indeed “what are they are talking about”.
One of the reasons that is given for putting people straight from formal education into senior positions is that they are now rather long in the tooth (left school at 18, then the “gap year”, then a three year or more undergraduate degree, then ……) and are unwilling to start at the bottom. However, this does not alter the fact that a person who does not know what he is doing should not be put in charge of people who do.
An undergraduate degree is a nice thing, but (in most subjects) it is like a nice painting, – it is nice to have it (and the process of study hopefully gave pleasure), but it does not make a person a better businessman (or whatever).
As for keeping people at school (or some college of further education) to 18 when they do not want to be there.
This will just mean they disrupt the school or college for everyone else.
This has already happened with the practice of paying young people to go to colleges of further education – they gain nothing from the colleges and ruin the experience of learning for the people who do wish be there.
“But paying them means they are in the world of work” – no it does not, the payments are welfare benefits (whatever the govenment chooses to call them).
I used to
teachbabysit something approximating the demographic in question at a local FE college, where it was the norm to spend much time and energy trying to extract the tiniest beads of work from idle, laconic students. One day, exasperated at trying to get a hopelessly overdue assignment out of one particular student, I said to him, “James, you’ve done nothing at all for three weeks: neither stick nor carrot makes any difference to you. Why exactly do you bother coming here?”.Came the reply (in a thick Cardiffian accent), “Aw, if I don’ come ‘ere, my mum says I’ll ‘ave to gedda job.”
Teach that, Alan Johnson!
Also there is the modern practice of putting people straight from formal education into senior positions. They are not suitable for these positions as they lack experience – they do not know what to do or indeed “what are they are talking about”.
Spot on Paul !
I was one of those.
I walked into a senior management position straight from University and just couldn’t do the job properly.
9 to 5 tedium was not what college trains you for.
Plus being the Civil Service, my staff resented me no end, and would actually sabotage things so mr College smartass had to sort them out!
I quit after about a decade, to things I was naturally good at and earned me far more money.
But my essential point from my post above is-
Primary and Junior education is essential. If you cant read by the time you are 11 then you are fucked.
There is no way you will cope with the complexety of the modern world.
You can keep people in education till the cows come home to improve your unemployment figures, but unless they can benefit from the experience then you are wasting their time and taxpayers money.
It’s a sad thing to note that even on Samizdata the debate is about “how long” our children should be stuck in the state controlled soul-crushing prisons we call schools. The design of public education is NOT education, but the dumbing down of the natural curiosity and intellect all children possess from an early age, putting a wedge in the bond between child and family, and stamping out individual ambition. Forcing children to sit still in a classroom performing pointless repetitive tasks is what drives the “children” and “adolescents” to apathy (or violence).
Children are much happier assisting (and in the process learning) from their parents, relatives, and family friends. How many of you learned everything you know from the public schooling system? How much of it was self-taught? If it wasn’t for the home-schooling movement I don’t even know if this would be a debate.
If you’re interested, read this fellow’s book:
http://johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm
You will be hard pressed to find a single contributing Samizdatista who would not accept as axiomatic that the state has no business being involved in education.
This was actually the norm in the Soviet Union when I was growing up (60ies-70ies), beginning at the age of 14, if memory serves.
Does that, in your opinion, make my suggestion a bad thing, or are you just sharing an interesting fact?
Here here. I can think of very, very little useful information and very, very few skills I have learnt from schooling – my economics lessons being the only major exception.
My apologies to anyone I unintentionally smeared with that brush. Any time there’s a debate how public schools should be run, rather than if they should I tend to see red.
I know beyond a doubt that my foray into the American public school system damaged my intellect and ambition. I entered the system during 4th grade (I was home schooled) after my parents divorce, and I think the only that saved me from suicide was an internet connection and my father (albeit living away) who helped me get along with life when things got tough.
It wasn’t for years until after I graduated that I was able to pull myself out of depression. I’m self-employed and enjoying life now, but that is despite public schooling.
Cynical: the latter.
Cynical, as for the rest of your comment: actually the most I learned was in the Soviet Union, (by way of math and science, very little by way of humanities. I am still making up for the latter). I wonder what their education system is like these days, because back then the schools in the West were not half as bad as they are now either.
I now have a son in a western type state education system, and it irks me that they make me miss the totalitarian hellhole.
I have a 13 year old who still has bad memories of his first few months of kindergarten. He has been homeschooled ever since. The only time it was an issue was when we lived in a State that required a lot of paperwork and for some greasy educator who could barely speak English to “oversee” his progress. We opted out of registering him for homeschooling – even though it was “illegal” to do so – we just didn’t want some bored bureaucrat with too much time on their hands poking around our life. Our back-up plan if this ever became problematic was to simply fly back home to Canada the minute any issue arose. This we did back in 2003.
Since then my son has learned geometry. He reads at what is considered a grade 10 level of of education, and he is super enthusiastic about being able to get a job as soon as the state will let him. (We have laws about kids working here).
We already did the paper-route thing, and he currently makes money by making baked goods and selling them to our neighbors on weekends.
Oh, at one point I was afraid about putting him back in school because of indocrination. But at 13, homeschooled by 2 libertarian parentsI doubt that would happen. More likely instead of coming home with black-eyes from students, he’d be coming home with black-marks from his teachers for espousing such radical ideas like ‘taxation is theft’. He is also well versed on Aboriginal Law. He understands the Canadian constituion, King George’s Royal Proclamation, that in essence means that as Aboriginals until a treaty is signed between our Nation and the Crown, he isn’t Canadian. Non-natives get really freaked out when grown natives says stuff like this. It certainly isn’t part of the “Aboriginal Awareness” curriculum offered in most of the schools here.
He’s started on Wil and Ariel Durant’s history of civilization series and is eating it up with a spoon.
Anyways – been homeschooling for a Loooong time now. It’s one of my acid tests actually for libertarians. If they have kids, are they sending them to these warehouses where malignant eloi are being manufactured, or are they taking care of their kid’s education themself.
As for the “We don’t have the money”.. If a single mother, who in some years didn’t earn more than $18,000 a year.. I don’t buy that argument. I brought this little person and his little brain into the world. Even if it means a lower standard of living, it’s one of the most important functions of parenthood.
I am currently at university. I need a certain number of credits to get into law school, and so I am slumbering and drooling through my courses right now. The only points of view allowed are the left, the mild left, the hard left and the looney left. It’s a drag, and I tell my boy about it when we do our work together – my homework and his school work.
My passive aggressive response to the leftwing profs has been to wear these t-shirts I made up. Now my son wants some in his size.
http://somenamedia.blogspot.com/2007/02/libertarian-wear-for-school-at-gym.html
I went on a scholarship to Bancroft’s School, a minor public school. Two years were condensed into one year so I got my 4A levels at 17. My background was real working class, my father was a docker. I realized that education was the way up the ladder when I was in state primary school and soaked up as much knowledge as I could garner. French pen friend and traveling to Marseilles by myself at age 13 teaches you to look after yourself. Hitchhiking around Europe at 16 bolstered that too. I did the milk round on Saturday mornings at age 11 or 12 when the money was collected. I worked as a commis waiter at Horse of the Year shows at age 16 at White City stadium. That’s all part of your education.
Fascinating Meaghan.More power to your elbow.
Mandrill; what you said about being fit only for one job was how I felt in my twenties.
It took me six years of downsizing, diversifying or being a ‘dropout’, but I finally recaptured my brain and educated myself in a few things I liked for a change.
If only you could see my CV.
Oddly, some agents won’t touch me because of the gap.
They say it shows I’m not really serious about a career.
(I bet they blub after hanging up).
Cynical – Colmpulsory education in the UK was introduced to try and stop families packing the kids of to work in factories and the like as soon as they could walk and follow simple instructions. This is one of the resaons our kids schooling starts earlier than most other countries.
I know thats not what you were getting at but it’s intresting none the less.
Alex, I read a paper some time ago written by Stephen Davies and published by the Libertarian Alliance, entitled ‘The Private Supply of Public Goods in Nineteenth Century Britain’. A good (if short) read if you havn’t looked at it already. It can be found here:
http://www.libertarian.co.uk/lapubs/histn/histn003.pdf
Anyway, whilst I’m not disputing that a desire to keep children out of factories was a contributing factor to the decision to enforce compulsory schooling, Dr. Davies also highlights the desire to indoctrinate children with Victorian morales. Private schooling was in fact fairly commonplace before this, he claims, but proponents of compulsory schooling felt that these private schools were failing to press home Victorian values and thus needed replacing with a more appropriate state system.
I think that was the gist of it anyway, been a while since I read that.
I would have thought that, throughout recent ages (and not criticising the desire to reduce child labour and stiffen both morals and spines), the concept and desirability of universal education, at least as far as the 3Rs on which all else is built, would have been paramount.
Best regards
That’s because the 18 year olds of today have been taught by the educationalists of today……
Cynic, good point. Pretty much anything by Stephen Davies is worth reading. Nice guy as well.
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