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Learn something new

Just who is being protected here? Just what benefit is being bestowed upon our society? What good can possibly be derived from a ruling like this?

“A mother-of-two has been jailed for failing to prevent her daughters from playing truant from school.

The Brighton woman was sentenced to seven days in prison and is only the second parent in the country to be jailed because her children skipped lessons.”

Why incarcerate this woman for the ‘refusenik’ behaviour of her children? I presume it’s because the state takes the view that threatening the liberty of parents will oblige them to become more coercive and bullying towards their own offspring in order that they may toe the educational establishment line. How degraded and immoral is that? I am reminded of the late Philip Larkin’s injunction:

“Man hands on misery to man
It deepens like a coastal shelf
Get out, as early as you can
And don’t have any kids yourself”

The once misanthropically gloomy Larkin begins to sound more and more like a pragmatist.

This woman has been sent to jail because education for children is compulsory and the state is the monopoly provider. Sadly, this paradigm is now a fixture of just about all Western societies but has anybody thought to ask the children themselves if this process is something that they either want or need? Clearly, the two little girls in question were fed up with being forced to traipse day after day to a draughty, municipal building and sat at a desk while a low-grade public servant with halitosis and a short temper drones at them about the French Revolution. Or Algorithms. Or something.

I am at a loss to understand how these two children, or the society of which they are a part, have anything to gain from being forced back into a situation where they are likely to be nothing except sullen and resentful prisoners? Very few people take the view that forcing human beings to work in state-owned factories on government-mandated projects will be in any way beneficial yet nearly everybody is entrenched in the dogmatic belief that doing the very same thing to human beings under the age of 18 will be nothing but beneficial.

This is an orthodoxy to which I once held myself: education is good, but children don’t realise this. Therefore prescribed and generally agreed packages of learning must be forced on them for their own good. Is this true? I must confess that I have no ready alternatives available nor any glib answers on what parents should do instead. But I do know that I am increasingly unsettled by noxious enforcements of the kind reported above and by the quiet, persuasive ideas of people like Alice Bachini.

Compulsory education is about compulsion not education. It is a received wisdom to which I am finding it increasingly difficult to subscribe and which I believe should be revisited and re-examined at a systemic level.

21 comments to Learn something new

  • I realise this won’t move you one iota, but when this happened last time, both the truants in question started attending school again, and the mother admitted that making her face her responsibilities in such a way was the right thing to do.

    If you have a principled objection to compulsory education, this won’t change your mind. But clearly plenty of good can be derived from such rulings. I hope to see more of them.

  • As a child I didn’t believe that education was good. It wasn’t until somewhat later that I realized that the schools I went to had nothing to do with education; education was what I got from reading all the time (including during classes).

    So, we can consider that another way that public schools harm society: by convincing people that education is useless.

  • SmilinK

    I’m stunned that you think the concept of education for children is even an issue. We can see the results on a *daily* basis of what illiteracy does to a populace — just watch the “Arab street” in action. You can see how easy it is to fool fools — 85% of the Middle Easterners *still* believe the 9/11 attacks were done by the Mossad, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

    Asking children if they *want* to go to school is insane. No one wants to go somewhere where they are forced to work, where they are judged by the results of said work, and where negative consequences ensue for poor effort. It’s always easier to sit at home and watch the tube. Compulsory education prevents people from making that most erroneous choice, through ignorance or sloth.

    School prepares children for life as a productive member of a technical society. The state has a vested interest in making sure we don’t have a perpetual underclass of illiterates wandering around. It’s tough to vote on issues when you can’t read. It’s also tough to do anything more complicated than cleaning toilets when you can’t read.

    To let children decide for themselves, with their still-growing brains and total inability to plan ahead, would be truly immoral. Not to mention the degradation of their lives as a result.

  • Gerald

    I’m with SmilinK: I’ve heard too many adults in dead-end, low-end jobs complaining about not being able to progress in our modern world, and not having a clue that it is EDUCATION that would have made the difference.

    At the same time, the state of education is in poor condition around the world: exactly what we’d expect from an enterprise which is both monopolistic and government run. Even private schools have some problems: My two boys would rather play computer games than study how to spell correctly, do math, compose a paragraph, and read. I have to, on occasion, set them down and explain that an education is required to produce the computer games they so much enjoy. They then sigh and hit the books…

    In situations like this, the role of the parent is more important than ever. If asking the opinion of, and following the desires of, the children is your suggestion, then you do it to YOUR kids.

    Maybe some people wish to turn our world into Bejor, where the kids are thrown out of the house and forced to go it on their own when they hit 12, the time that they normally start thinking that they know more than their parents. The momentary pleasure is not worth the heartbreak that comes later.

  • Anne Edelmann

    I hope the children’s mother has the option of sending them to a different school. That can make a big difference.

    Growing up, I didn’t particularly enjoy grade school because I endured lots of teasing and bullying. However, I loved learning (however contrived that may sound). And I knew it was where I had to be, in spite of the hated uniforms and students who disrupted class. As a kid, there are lots of things you have to do, and one more obligation exacerbates the all too real feeling of childhood powerlessness.

    So I’m with SmilinK as well. These kids think school is boring? Well, so is poverty. So is ignorance. So is daytime television!

  • All a child needs is a desire to learn. All that school does from day one is tell children not to have a desire to learn but to do as they are told.

    Smilink

    “85% of the Middle Easterners *still* believe the 9/11 attacks were done by the Mossad, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.”

    The reason they believe this is because they are indoctinated and rapidly become incapable of independent thought. This indoctination starts when they are children at school. Even individuals who may be capable of thinking diffrently soon have it knocked out of them by their peers in the playground. School insitutionalises these people, (whether it is religious or secular) it doesn’t educate them.

    I despair of your attitude. Instead of asking the question “Do you want to go to school?” ask them if they want to learn and the answer will be resounding “Yes”. That is until they have been to school and had the desire to learn knocked out of them.

    I could go on and on but unfortunately the only way you will see the light is to take the “school” out of yourself.

    By the way, a year ago I would have agreed with your view. However, having had my son out of school for that time now and watched him grow and develop into a rational, independent and free spirited individual I can confirm that “school” is nothing but a confidence trick and a totally illogical one at that.

  • ellie

    I doubt that these children were taking a principled, ‘refusenik-type’ stand. Twelve year olds are not known for making well thought out decisions. Giving children the choice re schooling will result in exactly what you’d expect – no school. It would also produce an unpleasant side effect: unsupervised children. I agree that compulsory education is an issue in need of reassessment, but not in the case of children aged 12-14.

  • Tim Haas

    Gents, while I share your regard for education, please consider for a moment that there is no such thing as compulsory education — only compulsory schooling. One cannot make another learn what he is not ready or willing to learn.

    State schooling causes more of the illiteracy and soft-mindedness that you decry than its lack does. Its purpose is not to educate, but to create dependence.

    I would like to know more about these girls and their reasons for skipping. Perhaps the telly wasn’t their first and only destination …

    I recommend John Taylor Gatto’s works as an introduction to the danger state schooling poses.

  • Julie

    Folks
    School is not compulsory- education is;

    SECTION 7 EDUCATION ACT 1996

    Compulsory Education

    The parent of every child of compulsory school age shall cause him to receive efficient full-time education suitable –

    (a) to his age, ability and aptitude, and

    (b) to any special educational needs he may have,

    either by regular attendance at school OR OTHERWISE.

    Education is a parents responsibility- most choose to allow the state to provide this for their children.
    It is not the only way!
    See http://www.free-range-education.co.uk

  • blabla

    SmilinK,

    To let children decide for themselves, with their still-growing brains and total inability to plan ahead, would be truly immoral. Not to mention the degradation of their lives as a result.

    I cannot believe you can make this argument with a straight face. It’s another manifestation of the infantization of children that is taking place in the Western world. Do you really think that a 12 year old child has absolutely no say in how she is educated? (Let’s put aside the notion that schooling = education for the moment.) Is the 12 year old just a blob of tissues and organs that must be shaped by guns and whips into a good citizen?

    Of course the state loves your “meta-context.” It is the first step towards an indoctrinated, obedient, collectivised society. It has worked well on you.

  • Parents who don’t want their children to be educated at a state school have every right to educate themselves or make alternative arrangements.

    Parents who don’t give a toss are failing themselves, their children and society. This ain’t freedom, it’s ignorance. Sanctions approved by society are perfectly appropriate here.

    Remember Anthony Burgess’ 1985? In it, the young men of TUCland, having been betrayed by a state schooling system that failed to deliver real education kidnapped people with learning and forced them to teach them Latin. Now, however, the UK has a state schooling system that fails to deliver real education. Unfortunately, the Latin-loving gangs have not appeared because there is no general agreement in youth culture that learning is good. Until that appears again, it is blabla’s point that is truly infantile.

  • Should parents also be jailed for failing to force their children to learn to read? Pass GCSE maths?

    Should parents be jailed if their children steal cars, take drugs, vandalise bus-stops?

    Should parents be jailed for allowing their children to commit murder? (What happened to the parents of the Bulger killers?) Isn’t teaching and/or enforcing basic moral standards the job of parents?

    What’s the difference (if there is one)?

    We’re not talking about parents failing to sign the kids onto the register. We’re talking about them failing to act *against the wishes of the child*. Which may or may not, in fact, be self-destructive: depending on how much faith one has in the disastrous and pointless education system we call schooling.

  • Tim Haas

    Iain, let’s run with your assertion a minute — how many parents truly don’t “give a toss”?

    The BBC piece says this woman is only the second parent in the country to be jailed for a child’s truancy (though of course it doesn’t say since when). How many parents are fined? A hundred a year? A thousand? Ten thousand? Just how big of a problem is this, really? And does that figure justify the moral cost to “society” of such compulsion?

    Compulsory state schooling (I maintain, pace Julie and the Education Act, that only attendance, not education, can be compelled) seems to me a make-or-break libertarian issue — how can one call himself a libertarian when he advocates what is essentially state ownership of children?

  • SmilinK

    Well, Mike, where to begin? Hmmm…

    The people in the Middle East are easy to indoctrinate because they never learned how to read. Egypt has the largest population of any Arab country (70 million) and the literacy rates are 63% for men, and 38% for women. (CIA FactBook 2001).

    It’s not hard to fool someone who has no ability to challenge what you say, or even independently read about it on their own. Most of these people get their news and politics from the Friday sermon at the mosque, which is why control of the imams is so important. Important enough for the Egyptian state to force them all to be government employees.

    “All a child needs is a desire to learn. All that school does from day one is tell children not to have a desire to learn but to do as they are told.”

    There are two dominant schools of thought on the innate nature of children: 1) children are innocent and purely good, until corrupted by society; 2) children are selfish monsters that need to have the rough edges ‘socialized’ before they’re allowed out.

    I’m just guessing what camp you’re in from the above quote. I, of course, subscribe to #2. My experience at restaurants and theaters with other people’s ‘independent’ little rats is empirical evidence.

    Socialization (learning to stand in line, not to be disruptive, don’t break stuff, etc), or as you call it, “institutionalized”, has to be taught somewhere. I’m assuming you never tell your son what to do, so where is he learning these valuable skills required to get along in society?

    I had good teachers and I had bad teachers, just the luck of the draw. I’ve forgotten the bad ones, but the great ones stand out in my mind 30 years later.

    Suppose your home-schooling folks happen to be bad at it? How will they ever know, if they’ve never known anything else? What options does the kid have then?

    I had a pretty good education, but there is no way I could teach the subjects I wasn’t good at, or enthused about. There may be things I’d like to pass along to my kids, but my lousy skill at math is not one of them. It wouldn’t take long for my kid to get better than me at algebra — so what happens then? How do I help him when he gets stuck?

    How do I get him started on calculus? Or should I? How do I know he’s making progress? Suppose he decides it isn’t fun and therefore it doesn’t matter?
    Have you never taken a required course that you needed, but couldn’t care less about? “Daddy doesn’t like algebra, so let’s just skip it , ok?”.

    Suppose the child has no desire to learn? I’ve met more than a few of those (my brother was one).

    I suppose your son is gung-ho each and every day to learn, never has to be forced, lives for the moment when those books crack open, right?
    ‘No, dad, I’d rather study botany than play Nintendo?”

    And what’s your stand on college? If home-schooling is the best, then your kid surely won’t be attending college, right? You/he have the skills and drive to do college-level work, of course, so that shouldn’t be a problem, right?

    I know for a fact you can’t even apply for whole categories of jobs without a degree, but you and he have already ruled those out, right?

    So I guess I could sum it up as follows: you, Mike, are an excellent teacher with an encyclopedic knowlege of human thought; you have plenty of free time to teach him; your child is highly motivated; you never, ever tell him what to do; and damn, look at all that money you saved on college tuition.

    Okay.

    But since not everyone possesses the same set of life facts, we have to have some way to make or force the little darlings to learn enough so they won’t be a drain on the society. Maybe even contribute, if we’re so lucky.

    Parents who are too stupid, lazy or drugged out to see the value of education need a boot in their ass, so their precious little spawn don’t turn out as worthless as they are.

    School as we know it may be a suck-ass solution, but it’s the best we have. Some time in the slam might get this dumbass’s attention.

  • SmilinK:

    “There are two dominant schools of thought on the innate nature of children: 1) children are innocent and purely good, until corrupted by society; 2) children are selfish monsters that need to have the rough edges ‘socialized’ before they’re allowed out.”

    This is nonsense. Most sensible people see children perfectly reasonably, as human beings with a huge drive for, and need to learn, information and knowledge. They don’t become good or bad *people* until the ideas they pick up are good or bad.

    1) is wrong: if you don’t give a baby the chance to grow up surrounded by civilised ideas, you won’t end up with a civilised adult. See various wolf-child legends.

    2) is wrong: if you treat a perfectly reasonable, decent five-year-old like they are a criminal who needs to be “smoothed out” you are initiating aggression against them, which is wrong.

    If libertarianism is neither left nor right, rational parenting is neither permissive nor authoritarian. It’s just civilised. And there is nothing much very civilised about schools. Otherwise, adults would want to go there too.

  • MommaBear has had more than enough of those children whose parents have ‘let them run free’, and listened to both her own children and now her grandchildren complain about those ‘free-running’ children to know that, however inadequate the current systems of education may be, it is still for the better for the rest of us out here in the real world that those children be placed ‘somewhere’ to be educated in skills and knowledge before they are turned loose on the rest of us !!

  • Ed Poinsett

    I don’t know if the children are “refuseniks” or not, in any case, I fail to see any benefit accruing to the children from the absence of their mother while she serves her sentence! While we’re at it, let’s bring back “debtor’s prisons”.

  • The move to imprison the parents of truants is a very recent one, by the way.

    More power to the state? Is that the way to bring up children better?

  • Patrick

    So the real issue is not about compulsion it’s about education. Of course kids should have to receive an education via one means or another. What’s important is how good the education is – and a state monopoly provider may not be the right answer. Let’s have some diverstity, flexibility, options, vouchers, faith schools, home tutors, depoliticised exam marking, university freedom to charge fees if they wish, less bullshit PC history lesson = discussion on race awareness, teach the 3 Rs at primary level, expulsions if needed, etc, etc. All that matters is how well rounded the individual is when they emerge at 16 or 18 into a the harsh real world. All else is dogma.

  • Well, Smilink, where to begin….

    The people in the Middle East are easy to indoctrinate because they never learned how to read. Egypt has the largest population of any Arab country (70 million) and the literacy rates are 63% for men, and 38% for women. (CIA FactBook 2001).

    It’s not hard to fool someone who has no ability to challenge what you say, or even independently read about it on their own.

    It is much easier to force them to say what you want them to say by putting them in a large group of people with an authoritarian figurehead saying exactly the same thing.

    Most of these people get their news and politics from the Friday sermon at the mosque, which is why control of the imams is so important.

    Guess you agree with me then!

    Important enough for the Egyptian state to force them all to be government employees.

    So are you advocating more involvement by the state to ‘force’ children to read. It seems that despite more and more state involvement in education in this country literacy levels for children (Especially at the age of my boy.) are falling. Learn the lesson, state involvement bad, independence good.

    There are two dominant schools of thought on the innate nature of children: 1) children are innocent and purely good, until corrupted by society; 2) children are selfish monsters that need to have the rough edges ‘socialized’ before they’re allowed out.

    I’m just guessing what camp you’re in from the above quote. I, of course, subscribe to #2. My experience at restaurants and theaters with other people’s ‘independent’ little rats is empirical evidence.

    Socialization (learning to stand in line, not to be disruptive, don’t break stuff, etc), or as you call it, “institutionalized”, has to be taught somewhere. I’m assuming you never tell your son what to do, so where is he learning these valuable skills required to get along in society?

    Well you assume wrong. I do show him how to behave in public. But do you know, he just seems to pick it up all by himself. He has the capability to ‘learn’ from those around him. ‘Those’ being the variety of people he meets every single day rather than the 30 or so peers he would run around with in school.

    I had good teachers and I had bad teachers, just the luck of the draw. I’ve forgotten the bad ones, but the great ones stand out in my mind 30 years later.

    Suppose your home-schooling folks happen to be bad at it? How will they ever know, if they’ve never known anything else? What options does the kid have then?

    I would trust a parent to have the child’s development more at heart than even the best teachers you had and so should you.

    I had a pretty good education, but there is no way I could teach the subjects I wasn’t good at, or enthused about. There may be things I’d like to pass along to my kids, but my lousy skill at math is not one of them. It wouldn’t take long for my kid to get better than me at algebra — so what happens then? How do I help him when he gets stuck?

    How do I get him started on calculus? Or should I? How do I know he’s making progress? Suppose he decides it isn’t fun and therefore it doesn’t matter?
    Have you never taken a required course that you needed, but couldn’t care less about? “Daddy doesn’t like algebra, so let’s just skip it , ok?”.

    We are not at the stage of him needing to know more than me yet. However as he has an interest in nature and wildlife he already knows more about this than I do. So how did he learn it if I don’t know it? He went out and got books, watched TV progammes, got me to take him to resource centres etc. etc. he wanted to learn so he did. It is not rocket science (Thankfully because I don’t know much about that either.)

    Suppose the child has no desire to learn? I’ve met more than a few of those (my brother was one).

    Perhaps he just wanted to learn different things than those he could learn at school?

    I suppose your son is gung-ho each and every day to learn, never has to be forced, lives for the moment when those books crack open, right?
    ‘No, dad, I’d rather study botany than play Nintendo?”

    He loves his PS2. He is a ‘normal’ kid after all and he now has so much more free time since he isn’t being dragged around the corridors of school’s for hours a day, so he can do both.

    And what’s your stand on college? If home-schooling is the best, then your kid surely won’t be attending college, right? You/he have the skills and drive to do college-level work, of course, so that shouldn’t be a problem, right?

    I know for a fact you can’t even apply for whole categories of jobs without a degree, but you and he have already ruled those out, right?

    If he wants to go to college I am sure he will. Even if he wants to go to school, he will. It is his choice, one he is capable of making even now. It is possible to get into university without A levels (It is too easy to get into university in my opinion, but that is another argument.) in this country. These are questions we will ask at the time but I have total confidence that should he make the decision to go he will be more than capable.

    So I guess I could sum it up as follows: you, Mike, are an excellent teacher with an encyclopedic knowlege of human thought; you have plenty of free time to teach him; your child is highly motivated; you never, ever tell him what to do; and damn, look at all that money you saved on college tuition.

    None of the above. I am just an ordinary guy who has had his eyes opened to a whole new vista of possibilities just by making one decision in the interests of his son one year ago.

    But since not everyone possesses the same set of life facts, we have to have some way to make or force the little darlings to learn enough so they won’t be a drain on the society. Maybe even contribute, if we’re so lucky.

    Just maintain their desire to learn, have a bit of faith and and you just might find they surprise you. Sheesh I thought I was cynical until I met you!

    Parents who are too stupid, lazy or drugged out to see the value of education need a boot in their ass, so their precious little spawn don’t turn out as worthless as they are.

    School as we know it may be a suck-ass solution, but it’s the best we have. Some time in the slam might get this dumbass’s attention.

    There are so few parents like you describe. Why should we all suffer regulation just to solve a problem for such a small group of people.

    Gone on too long now. We won’t agree so lets wait for David to post up some more ammo. Whadya say?

  • Jay N

    Interesting arguments, which I am able to read them because I was taught to read, I can afford the equipment to read them on because I am sufficiently well educated to be valuable in the labour market. Most of this I got from school, the building blocks of my being able to develop and then satisfy my own thirst for knowledge. But I was a little bugger and if I had been given the choice I would have spent every day on my bike and with my friends. It was my parents that recognised the value of education not me, and I don’t believe I really understood that value until post university.

    I think a level of coercion is needed to get children to allow themselves to be educated in the basics, it is preferable that coercion is delivered by parents. If you can do this by appealing to your child’s rationality all to the good, but it is a parental responsibility to ensure that education takes place.

    There is no reference to this woman providing home schooling or objecting to the educational system she just couldn’t be bothered to make her kids go to school, or to respond to the legitimate concerns of various institutions.

    To loose interest completely is to be negligent toward your child, and negligence especially with regard to education is in my view tantamount to child abuse and, again in my view, that should be punished.