For your education then, I benefitted from free and mandatory education. Free as my parents nor I did have to sell a kidney or get indebted: mandatory as it was illegal for my parents to pull me out of school before 16. (yes, illegal)
Now I wish the quality would have been a notch up, but the era was already full speed reducing the supposed “cost” of the education system and civil servants, not weighing in the societal benefits. 40 some years later and the trend hasn’t reversed yet
Would your parents have pulled you out of school if it had not been illegal?
What punishment would you have desired to be put upon them if they had?
Why stop at sixteen? Plenty of adults are stupid, children at least tend to still have some their natural curiosity, unstrangled by the world. I suggest mandatory refresher courses, each adult spends every other tuesday evening at a local community centre, learning the latest in medicine, ecology, queer theory, historical research etc… If they fail to attend they get a fine of two days wages. That’s hardly unreasonable? Afterall the current polycrisis is urgent! can we really afford to wait 40 years (first for the new education to be implimented) then for the children who go through it to reach positions of influence in society, the skills they’ve learned dulling against the grindstone of bloodless office jobs all the while?
For your education then, I benefitted from free and mandatory education. Free as my parents nor I did have to sell a kidney or get indebted: mandatory as it was illegal for my parents to pull me out of school before 16. (yes, illegal)
Now I wish the quality would have been a notch up, but the era was already full speed reducing the supposed “cost” of the education system and civil servants, not weighing in the societal benefits. 40 some years later and the trend hasn’t reversed yet
Would your parents have pulled you out of school if it had not been illegal?
What punishment would you have desired to be put upon them if they had?
Why stop at sixteen? Plenty of adults are stupid, children at least tend to still have some their natural curiosity, unstrangled by the world. I suggest mandatory refresher courses, each adult spends every other tuesday evening at a local community centre, learning the latest in medicine, ecology, queer theory, historical research etc… If they fail to attend they get a fine of two days wages. That’s hardly unreasonable? Afterall the current polycrisis is urgent! can we really afford to wait 40 years (first for the new education to be implimented) then for the children who go through it to reach positions of influence in society, the skills they’ve learned dulling against the grindstone of bloodless office jobs all the while?