Human beings are a strange lot. Despite being blessed (theoretically at least) with the powers of critical analysis they are nonetheless wont to form an unquestioning consensus around an idea that makes little sense and produces consistently awful outcomes. In fact, the awfulness of the outcomes seems to be directly proportionate to the dogmatic insistence that there cannot possibly be any other way of doing things.
I can think of no clearer example of this than compulsory education: a bad idea which is (by and large) badly implemented by the state in the form of day-prisons which act as a factory for producing unacceptably large numbers of witless, traumatised, ignorant, semi-literate teenagers and not an insignificant number of violent, anti-social thugs.
Nor is this a secret shame. Indeed, it is the subject of much national hand-wringing about ‘what to do’. And yet, if I dare to suggest that the whole idea of incarcerating children for at least 10 years and then indoctrinating them with the things that politicians think they should know about is both counterproductive and immoral and bound to produce very little except awful outcomes, the reaction I get is rather similar to the one I imagine I would get if I were to demand that all pregnant women be injected with rabies.
Still, the best way to deal with a ‘truth-that-dare-not-speak-its-name’ is to speak it; often and boldly. That is why we need press releases like this one from the Libertarian Alliance:
“State schooling is an instrument of ruling class control. It is a means by which ideologies of obedience are imposed on the young.
State schools have always encouraged intellectual passivity and trust in the authorities. In the past generation, they have begun also to celebrate illiteracy, innumeracy and a general ignorance of the world. Add to this endemic bullying and temptations to unwise experimenting with sex and recreational drugs, and we have in state schooling a comprehensive absence of what used to be meant by education.
Rising truancy levels are to be welcomed. They show that increasing numbers of the young are withdrawing from the process of mass brainwashing. The young may not yet be expressing positive discontent with the corporatist police state New Labour and the Conservatives have made for us. But they are beginning to vote with their feet.
While the Libertarian Alliance does not encourage breaches of the criminal law, even if the law happens to be pointless or malevolent, we do look forward to a time when state schooling will be as dead an institution as the workhouse and the debtor’s prison.”
And when that day comes, human beings (being a somewhat strange lot) will be disinclined to recall or even believe in a time when there was a consensus around state education.
Thaddeus,
You are talking about compulsory education, the Lib A. release is talking about state schooling.
Two different concepts which your article elides.
Good point, Chris, but it is quite difficult to have one without the other.
But even compulsory schooling in a system domintated by the state can vary in its quality and effect. Britain from the 1940s on has had compulsory state-dominated secondary education, but only in the last 20 years has the state sought minutely to control the content of that education centrally, and also to extend its grip to the private sector. Previously even state schools here were subject to a mixture of pressures, operating partly in an academic marketplace and offered different things in different places.
Lets say that compulsory education is brought to an end.
What happens when the economy collapses because not enough people can read, write, add, subtract, use a computer, or understand basic scientific principles? Education should be compulsory but its content should be defined by the market or the individual, not the state.
Alot of the things that we now take for granted would not have been possible without a highly educated population, and we wouldn’t have a highly educated population if we didn’t have compulsory education.
I have a feeling that our education system (in the U.K at least) is failing because badly educated people are easier to control and manipulate.
Thaddeus,
State schools have a lot of problems. I don’t think the flaw lies with the concept. The flaw lies with successive governments and their continual meddling. Talk to any teacher. If you do the reply you’re most likely to get something like: “All I want to do is teach my subject but the DfE…”.
You sound like you’re writing an opinion piece for the Daily Mail bemoaning the state of the “Youth of Today”. That’s a piece which can be dusted off every few years – you just use “mods”, “rockers”, “punks”, “chavs” according to decade.
Now, if you’d complained about the lamentable slide in standards in science and maths I’d be right with you, but…
mass brainwashing
… your tinfoil hat is in the post.
I would like to see someone separate “State” and “meddling”.
Providing education paid for by the state does not mean it has to be provided by the state. Right now we have an ever-tightening near complete state-controlled monopoly on education. This is highly unlikely to produce a good product. People vainly struggle to make it do so, often tragically using “methods” that will make things worse. They are desperate to do something…ANYTHING except face up to the reality, to the actual solution to the problem.
If the State wants to spend £8k per pupil, as they say they want to, let each parent have that at their disposal to pay for a school (subject to HM inspection) to do the job. If LEA schools are so wanted, efficient and “right on”, parents will select them, otherwise they will avoid them, if they can, at all costs.
One way to cut truancy is to reduce the Welfare State so kids realise that if they leave school witless and unemployable the cold hard streets will be the only outcome. Another is to allow “children” to leave at 14 and work if they wish.
I am no expert, but my guess is 95%+ of “semi literate teenagers” would sort themselves out if they knew the realities, knew that abdication was not a State-funded option.
Make all schools independent. Get government hands off them. Have education compulsory between 7 and 17.
If someone can point out a society where state education has been removed, or has never been introduced, and which is as a result freer and/or better off than the UK, I will be more convinced.
State run education is the UK is often very poor (although it still varies massively by school, which is an encouraging sign), but I see no argument that bad education is worse than no education. When I look at the internal education and training programmes run by large private companies, they make our state schools look like models of free throught and liberal learning.
The quote does not appear in the linked document.
If the State wants to spend £8k per pupil, as they say they want to, let each parent have that at their disposal to pay for a school (subject to HM inspection) to do the job.
Make all schools independent.
Now we’re getting somewhere. We have to have education, what we don’t need is an education system. What exactly do the LEAs and the DfE do that is so vital?
The idea of giving parents 8 grand a year per kid for education sounds nice but then it might just be a lot quicker, easier, cheaper and less patronising to not take that money off them as tax in the first place.
But then there are the proles. There are always the proles. TimC I dunno what planet you’re on but, unfortuantely, it doesn’t work like that. 95% of the teenage scumbags wont ever educate themselves, they will merely lapse into a life of crime and Jeremy Kyle.
The problem is not in compulsion, the problem is not in the State.
The problem is in the inability to allow winners, the inability to allow some to evolve out of the primieval slime.
The greatest damage done to the Labour party was to allow dockers’ sons with ability to become doctors.
Once this was spotted, of course, we got “if youse think 1 + 1 = 3, we’se cool wif tha'”
ADE
Good stuff, but you’d be better off sticking to the longer articles, Thad’.
Don’t know when education became compulsory, but since it was nationalised and became free in the 1890’s UK literacy rates have improved not one single jot.
Literacy rates improved in Singapore when (almost)compulsory education was introduced… I dare anybody to argue otherwise.
I agree with Nick M. I think it’s not a matter of state control. State control is fine… as long as they are controlling and putting in the correct things.
The current increase in illiteracy, truancy, etc is not due to schools failing at their tasks. Rather, it’s a reflection of society’s reluctance to implement discipline on children at an age when they need it most.
When students walk away from school, is it because they don’t like the ‘brainwashing’? No, it’s because they don’t want to study, have no inclination to suffer headaches by exercising their brains, and have no discipline to even stand straight for a few seconds. Parents are worse; their kids are so precious that they are liable to blow every little matter up into a media event.
And if we think that by abolishing compulsory education, or state education, that children would suddenly change their minds and become exemplary students in private schools all of a sudden, we would need a mass brain lobotomy. No, they’ll still be lazy, they still won’t learn, they’ll still skip school(albeit at their parents’ expense).
Get the industry to tell us what they need, the things students need to learn. Return to us the power to discipline and punish recalcitrant students. No need for increased funding. That’s not asking for too much, is it?
I’m a little confused about how something can be compulsory but left to a “free market”. The “market” would then not be free, simply a system of parents sending their kids to babysitters who go through the motions of instilling “education” into their brains, if that. Doesn’t sound much different than State run compulsory education.
The meeting of the minimum requirement is the main argument against voucher programs here in the US, slipshod organizations establish themselves, let the voucher money pour in, and do little educating. At the end of the day, some bureaucrat is going to insist on having a say as to the process and the whole thing becomes as it was.
The State should not compel anyone to condition themselves according to its design, directly or indirectly, when life or property is not threatened.
And even if compulsion is considered necessary, basic reading and writing can be instilled in 3-4 years at most. Anything passed that traverses from basic skills to idealogy. It is the last 7-8 years where indoctrination into accepted philosophies occurs. I doubt a State that compels education isn’t going to want a say in nature of the philosophy.
State schooling . . . is a means by which ideologies of obedience are imposed on the young.
If only.
There is nothing wrong with that if they actually have the smarts.
Actually it is a means by which ideologies of dependence and entitlement without cost and responsibility are imposed on the young.
I believe it was Mark Twain
who said something to the effect
Teach them to read and write, then show them where the library is.
I’ve heard many times that the literacy rate was actually higher before the introduction of compulsory schooling in the United States. I believe the main impetus behind compulsory schooling was to indoctrinate the huge wave of immigrants in the late 1800s into American values. Which was not a bad idea, but unnecessary in a free economy.
Children who want to learn will. The others have no business being babysat. Schools have given up trying to force the unwilling to learn. The hugely expensive education bureaucracy is a welfare system for poor kids and otherwise unemployable education majors.
I did my best learning when I was able to cut class and go to the library to read the books I wanted to read.
Despite being blessed (theoretically at least) with the powers of critical analysis they are nonetheless wont to form an unquestioning consensus around an idea that makes little sense and produces consistently awful outcomes.
And I thought you were going to write about socialism. Beats education for poverty creation.
No, it’s because they don’t want to study, have no inclination to suffer headaches by exercising their brains, and have no discipline to even stand straight for a few seconds
TWG hits the nail on the head. I’ve got a masters but if you’d given me the chance as a kid I would never have even learned to read. Lego was too much fun.
And even if compulsion is considered necessary, basic reading and writing can be instilled in 3-4 years at most. Anything passed that traverses from basic skills to idealogy. It is the last 7-8 years where indoctrination into accepted philosophies occurs
Brad. You are so almost off-beam. You might be right about the intellectual garbology that is sociology and similar taught by GROLIES. I chose to learn value-free subjects – science, languages, art. OK, art isn’t value free but I was the one doing the piccies.
It’s a good point though, Brad. The only subjects that should be taught in school should be value-free. Give the kids the essential tools: literacy, mathematics, science and then let them work out what to do with them.
Speaking as a former student in the American public school system, I learned virtually nothing new and/or interesting after middle school. The state educational system is numbing to both mind and soul, and I always did my best learning out of school on subjects that held interest for me.
I must have skipped several months worth of class each year to get the hell out of that prison so I could keep my sanity. I feel that the system in fact blunted my inclination and ability to learn and that I’ve only been able to recover it over the years after graduation.
My children wont spend a single day in state run education.
ADE: Go back only 1, 2 or 3 generations and almost all Doctors will have decended from agricultural labourers. That, or regressed from a higher stratum. Same applies for…everyone. I have no time for ladder-kickers (and New Labour Sociofascists are arch-ladder kickers!).
If kids were actually taught how to learn, e.g. taught how to comprehend and understand the Classics, for example, then they would have some armoury against indoctrination and spin. I am a stuck record on this but the education system seems now designed to churn out imbeciles. Period. “Fit only to consume, pay tax and not get run over by our armoured motorcades”, to paraphrase.
NickM, you are free to accuse me of being on Planet Hopeful, and maybe I am. But I really do think the vast majority of kids, freed, as Perry so succinctly says (again!), from the mindset of dependency will bloom and strive as most people always used to. One scumbag in 10,000 can seem an awful lot of trouble, but it is only 0.01%
“Don’t know when education became compulsory, but since it was nationalised and became free in the 1890’s UK literacy rates have improved not one single jot.”
Is there a source for this?
As for something compulsory not being compatible with a free market, I don’t really understand that. Eating is compulsory on pain of death, but there’s no problem with a free food market. It is compulsory to maintain your car to a certain mechanical standard, but a free market in garages seems to work.
Completely agree. Though I did (completely by accident, I assure you) manage to get a good education out of the American system, most don’t. My cousin is a case in point. He is not at all interested in or good at academics and barely managed to pass high school. As soon as he graduated, he went full-time at the job he had been working after school and stuck with it. He is now the most financially successful of all the cousins, including one who has a law degree and another (me) with a Master’s. The three years he spent in high school were a complete waste of his time, and in some sense bad for the economy as well, since the state was paying for him to stay in school and stare at the ceiling when what he really wanted to do was work.
Which brings me to another point: I think there is a real sense in which compulsory education encourages criminal behavior in youth. School is where lots of students find opportunities to join gangs, push drugs, etc. The point was made earlier that kids not in school will find devil’s work to do. Maybe for younger children – but for those over 14 (as pointed out by another commenter) jobs are available. Youths with jobs are much less likely to become criminals than those in school, if for no other reason than they are not generally allowed to spend all day passing notes and talking about pop culture. And for people inclined to do manual labor (indispensible to any economy), on-the-job training is infinitely superior to learning ancient history from an underpaid state employee.
TWG,
State control is fine… as long as they are controlling and putting in the correct things.
That should be quote of the day, but not in a good way.
It is the conviction of those running states that they know what’s best for everyone, and are entitled to act on it, that is the source of all danger that states (and equivalent cults of authority) present to mankind. The idea that there is always a determinable ‘correct thing’ in human life, which institutions should be controlled to reproduce, is at the core of all the most poisonous doctrines – what they differ in is what exactly people should be forced to think and do.
Quite right, education is wasted on the young as Oscar Wilde said; we should send the little blighters down coalmines or something.
I have used the example of my great grandfather before in threads related to Education.
He was a headmaster pre and post the 1870 Act.
Pre the Act, he taught mixed age and mixed ability pupils for money. Post the Act, he taught 5 to 11yr olds.
After the Act you see, places for a forty year old who had missed their schooling but could now afford to catch up, dried up.
The mind set was different back then.
People wanted to learn, not as now forced to follow the narrow furrow of the National Curriculum to it’s natural conclusion of universal ignorance.
As long as we’re all equally stupid, that’s cool with our Nulab masters.
Whoever above said that the literacy rate was way above today, was absolutley correct. Adult literacy was about 90%
The only way to get on if you were poor in a rather rigid class based society, was to be able to read and write at the very least. Besides, in a world without radio or television, Ipods and computers, Print was THE medium. If you couldn’t read you didn’t know what was going on.
So people saught and paid for knowledge back then.
Now they ladle PC slop. No wonder the recipients spit it out!
***As for something compulsory not being compatible with a free market, I don’t really understand that. Eating is compulsory on pain of death, but there’s no problem with a free food market. It is compulsory to maintain your car to a certain mechanical standard, but a free market in garages seems to work. ***
There is a difference between being compelled by an outside force and a necessity, like eating.
I was responding generally to the commentator who said education should be compelled between the ages of 7-17, and others who seem to think that being compelled to do something and yet leaving it to a “free market” is somehow truly free market, it cannot be as you would be forcefully creating demand where it didn’t otherwise exist, and be a stimulus for shoddy suppliers, and again not much different than most aspects of State supplied education.
Education is considered by many to be some sort of fungible good maintained in silos, and most effectively distributed by socialistic means. It is nothing more than a subset of all human conditioning, and to socialize it gives the maintaining of young minds to bureaucrats. As unsavory the prospect that certain parents dominate their children’s minds, bureaucrats doing so is less so to me.
By all means, teaching and learning advanced skills is necessary to maintain advanced economies, and having instutions aimed at teaching those who want to learn is what a culture should strive for. Forcing ALL to learn more than they may need to or want to, over a decade or more, and stimulating the charlatans among us, whether the State Bureaucrat or the “Free Supplier”, to pretend to teach but only babysit to keep the gravy train moving in their direction, is not an answer. It merely forces a misallocation of resources, which is the principal result of all government coercion.
A real life observation, having spent 7 years as a controller for a small, light assembly manufacturer, is that even a high school education is not necessary for all people. ALL of our factory workers had high school educations, who then proceeded to work at non-skilled labor for their livelihood. The years between learning their “three r’s” to high school graduation was lost on them. There was little prospect for them to better themselves and were destined to work such jobs into the future. Any forced advanced education was lost on them, and was merely a boon to state bureaucrats, invigorating the biggest lobby in my particular state, the teachers’ union.
I had no problem with my school education (well almost) but was probably just lucky with the teachers I got.
I did up to the end of Junior High in the US (including one year at a Christian Academy which happened by accident — and I and my parents hated). I did the equivalent of high school at a Private School in the UK.
The subjects I excelled at in the US school were Maths and Science. Empirical subjects where philosophy (at that level) doesn’t enter much. I didn’t get on as well in the social studies class. I failed that because my opinions didn’t match those of the teacher or syllabus (it was very woolly minded), which was annoying as it kept me out of the NJHS.
In the UK I was lucky in that I only chose subjects (passed GCSE) which I was interested in (Maths and Science) and in GCSE I only wrote down what I needed to in order to get the grade I wanted (without actually agreeing with it — but it at least made me want to get different opinions on it myself by going to the library and reading). The only “subjective” subject I took at A-Level was Ancient History (which I took purely for fun) and had teachers which encouraged students to reach their own opinion — as long as you argued it well.
At College I did Engineering and avoided any “soft” subjects preferring to be self taught in those areas as I became interested in them, without being pushed into the “appropriate” opinion.
Hereth end the ramble.
I think children should only be able to leave school at 14 if they have a genuine job to go to, and should be compelled to return to education if that job ceases.
The last thing you want is unemployed 14-year-old yobs hanging around outside school gates “encouraging” the more able friends of theirs to skip school and join their gang.
ADE is right. Ability sorting is an unpopular idea, but absolutely necessary if we are to quit stunting the development of talent in our best and brightest. In a hypercompetitive global economy, this is critical. Why aren’t we more panicked now than the Sputnik freakout?
Ah, parent ego. Even parents of the mentally retarded low IQ kids want them in the college track. Otherwise mom would be ashamed around her church friends.
If you’re in favour of compulsory state education, I can see no reason why you ought not also to be in favour of compulsory government-led excercise, for all the analogous reasons. “Surely you’re not encouraging people to be truant from the mid-day musical aerobics hour? If the government didn’t save you from yourself, think how fat and unfit you’d be! Think of the cost to the NHS!”
The one size fits all school model we currently employ is a 19th century idea woefully out of step and utterly obsolete when maintained in a 21st century setting.
It is not simply a matter of how they’re funded, or who designs the curriculum, although those are certainly significant points of potential reform. We must deal with a more fundamental question:
Is it appropriate to demand that all youth, regardless of differing cultural backgrounds, family influences, and natural aptitudes, report like soldiers to a massive training structure in which they are expected to act, work, and progress in a sort of lockstep march to achieve whatever vague goals are in force this year to signify competence, and fulfill graduation requirements?
The results of this educational factory system are similar to most other collectivist experiments in which good intentions are married to faulty implementation.
Large numbers of boys who are unsuited to the demands of sitting quietly and paying attention to some droning foolishness are “diagnosed” as damaged in some way and placed in special ed.
Large numbers of children of both sexes are taught that critical thinking is a waste of time, as the teacher knows the answers he or she wants, and that’s all that matters.
Large numbers of children are taught that being different is wrong, unless it’s being disruptive and sullen, which is cool and James Dean-like, even if they never heard of Dean in their lives.
Children who can remember hundreds of song lyrics, thousands of video game moves, and the details of uncounted movies and TV shows, along with tons of celebrity gossip and trivia, suddenly cannot remember how to read, or do math, or construct geometric shapes when asked to do so by a teacher. Can’t remember, or can’t be bothered?
Contrary to an assertion above, all courses, hard or soft, teach values. The values taught by science and math are that the universe is comprehensible to the rational mind, that there are right and wrong answers, that some things are simply true, whether you like it or not, and that certain effects invariably follow certain causes, and all the wishing in the world won’t change them one iota.
Needless to say, the school system is failing miserably in teaching the basics of science and math to all but a small minority of students, even as we enter a century which will almost certainly become more and more dependent on just those subjects for its future progress and development, and less and less congenial to manual labor and limited technical skills.
In case this seems overly pessimistic, I should also mention that, inevitably, the same youth being processed through this mental and psychological meatgrinder will react as all youth in all times have reacted—they will do everything they can to get rid of it as soon as they are of an age and social position to make their move.
It would be well, therefore, if somewhere along the way, they heard some ideas of individual rights, liberties, and private initiatives before they composed reforms consisiting only of more of the same, led by more of the same “experts”, and costing even more money to fail even more grotesquely than the current system manages to do year after year after year.
In my locale, the school board just announced a referendum proposing a large funding increase for the next several years, augmenting the big increase they got passed a few years ago, which turned out to not be enough, as it never, ever is.
Guess who’s going to vote “no”. Hint—his kids go to a private school costing a pretty penny each month, and well worth every foregone night out, or delayed fishing boat purchase.
Ron- if a kid leaves at 14 he/she should have no state assistance. Leaving school = young adult in an adult world.
Fining or imprisoning their parents would just join the list of events if they were “told” to stay in school as you suggest.
The best way to keep someone in a room is to leave the door open. If they want out, they want out. At least the room would still be a pleasant place for those who wish to remain.
mandrill: speaking only for the UK here, but we managed to create the Industrial Revolution and defeat Napoleon – and a few other things you might be able to think of – without having compulsory “education”, so what’s the big deal?
Compulsory education was introduced in the UK to help stamp out child labour (thats one reason our kids start younger than most). On the continet it was used as a method of creating nations, they taught all the usual national creation myths and more importantly the national ‘language’ (when italy was formed as a nation only 3% of the population could actually speak italian).
The only reason I can think of the state relinquishing control of education is for pragmatic purposes: leaders and managers of private schools get greater say in deciding what students to take in, and which students to kick out when they are incorrigible.
A state-run institution has to answer to the Minister or Secretary of Education, a politician at heart, who in turn answers to the people. And as mentioned elsewhere, the idea of mass tertiary education(nobody’s stupid; it’s only the teachers who’re lousy) means that the entire population of parents expect their kids to get to the university, no matter how stupid or lousy they are, and they exert the appropriate pressure on politicians to ensure this outcome.
Of course, institutions where degrees are conferred with a large enough bribe will probably exist, but the industry will sort them out and rank them internally.
This, however, still does not solve the problem of only a small proportion of children actually attending school in a totally free market system without the coercive power of the state behind it. How are we going to ensure a minimum standard of literacy while letting children essentially do what they want? While this might be good for us teachers(teaching only students who want to learn? YAY!!!), what do you think will become of a democracy where more than half of the population cannot do simple maths and understand everyday problems?
My solution to this: Institute a basic maths and science test for all age-eligible voters. If they can’t do simple maths, they can’t do simple reasoning, and have no business deciding the fate of the nation. It’s elitist as heck, but what’s the alternative?
If pressed, I’ll allow high school and above to be optional, but the ages of 7 to 12 are absolutely critical, and should be compulsory.