Conscription

I needed to think about this for a while, but they are right. The campaign against educational conscription, started by Fabian Tassano and others, is pressing a vital principle. People old enough to get married and have children are old enough to decide for themselves whether or not they stay at school.

What's more, the practical case is overwhelming. Our problem is not children leaving school too early, but leaving school without functional literacy and numeracy. It is schools full of bored and disruptive children (which the proposal to raise the school leaving age would make worse). It is a culture of duplicitous target matching and the abandonment of challenging curriculae. It is an absence of means by which to preserve order in class.

I have just signed the campaign's petition, and I urge you to consider doing the same.