Tuesday, March 12, 2013

An Arguement for Compulsory Education

Compulsory factory education was among the first general education policies in the world and was one of the reasons Prussia (and later all of Germany) became a scientific, economic and military powerhouse. But enough with the history, let's hear some arguments

The point and great benefit of having a compulsory school system is everyone learns roughly the same curriculum, the teaching of that curriculum is monitored by multiple parents (and if necessary, parents initatives, ministries etc.) and the chances of someone just imprinting their views on kids are minimized.

If it were up to me, I'd also ban private schools, as that would incentivize rich parents to lobby for better state education.

What everyone seems quick to invoke is the idea of an "indoctrination factory" while forgetting that because it is PUBLIC everyone has the possibility (and duty) to supervise and try to improve the standard of teaching. And while I'll be the first to admit that changing stuff for the better at the national level is nigh impossible due to heavy lobbying, with state schools you can at least improve things locally. If you allow homeschooling, you have no public supervision, you just have the parents having 18+ years to mess up their children if they are so inclined.

"HAH", some might cry "now you have shown your true colors! You want the children turned into willful servants of "the man" and make everyone learn the same things! Supervised by the sheeple establishment no less"

Well, yes and no. I want everyone to learn the currently accepted scientific consensus, while leaving enough room for indiviality. You know where you can ensure that? Public Schools.

Public schools where more than one strain of thought is present in both teachers and students, where every student HAS to learn a bare minimum by themselves because even the best teachers in the smallest classes can't smother them with constant attention and drill their biases into them like a pair of parents can with 1-7 children.

For the vast majority, the compulsory school system is beneficial. I have personally known co-students who came home and spent another 3 hours unlearning evolution and in some cases physics because their parents were religious nuts. With compulsory public (or at least not-at-home) schooling, at least they had the chance to get a different perspective.

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