Compulsory Education

Otherwise known as "schooling".

What are your opinions on compulsory education?

• Do you like it, or do you dislike it?
• Do you believe that it increases the intelligence of the population or decreases it?
• Do you feel that it enables children to reach new heights or cripples their ingenuity and view of society?
• Do you feel that its purpose is to help its subjects or to enforce corporate interests on them?

I side with the latter on all of these questions. My experience with compulsory schooling and the psychology behind it have led me to conclude that compulsory schooling is nothing more or less than the indoctrination of young minds for corporate and political ends. The way that society is structured and the way that people behave within it is based on schools, as school is a child's first impression of organized society, and if that was not enough, it the impression that they keep for at least twelve years of their lives before they are allowed out into another world. However, this world is full of people who went through the same thing they did, so they are unlikely to find much different there. This, among other things, is only reasonable and should be clear to anyone who understands the nature of human development.

While I could write several essays on the subject explaining why I feel this way, I feel that evidence supporting my conclusion would do a far better job than any amount of persuasive language I could present. If you live in the US specifically and still feel that you have basis on which to believe in compulsory education after hearing this lecture, then I would be very eager to hear what you have to say, or rather, I would be very interested in the "why" for any answers other than my own that you may hold.

To anyone with an interest in the intended nature and general history of compulsory education, I strongly urge you to take an hour of your time to listen to the following lecture. If you are not already familiar with Gatto, let me introduce you.

John Taylor Gatto (born December 15, 1935) is a retired American school teacher with nearly 30 years experience in the classroom, and author of several books on education. He is an activist critical of compulsory schooling, of the perceived divide between the teen years and adulthood, and of what he characterizes as the hegemonic nature of discourse on education and the education professions.​

[video=youtube;5UadPqGscfI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UadPqGscfI[/video]​

I assure you that your time will not have been wasted.

 

I can see where you are coming from, but I don't really know what alternative system there is. The only other way I can think of to give kids education is home schooling and private tutors, which works for some but can quickly become very expensive, especially for those who want to go on to study subjects at more advanced levels.

 

Do you mean just being forced to study in school or the sort of lessons that are forced upon you?

If it's the later then yeah I agree with you to an extent. There are certain subjects which I find don't benefit the student, sure they may be able to learn something but it could just take away from the core subjects like Maths, English and Science causing their grades to fall which definitely doesn't balance out. I believe subjects like "general studies" or "citizenship" are more just common knowledge that you should know anyway or knowledge that you won't need to know unless you go to work in politics. Over here in Britain, most universities or colleges don't recognise them so they will neither help or hinder us when going into further education. I recognise that they could teach students something but the stress it causes when it's next to other important exams is more of a hindrance.

If you were referring to the former then I believe school is important up to a point. The government over here are making it compulsory to be in some sort of education up until the age of 18 which I believe is wrong because after 16 some people are just better suited to go off into work, they can't expect everyone to be able to cope. However, I see and understand their intentions to try and get people to broaden their knowledge but it could just inhibit students and give them a negative view of education as a whole causing them to steer clear and not progress further. However, I think that up to the age of 16 it is important to do some form of education as that will get them started and teach them social skills as well as organisation which will help them get a good job in the future.

 

What Gato and I suggest is not only eliminating the basic compulsory schooling program, but also an overhaul of the university system so that there is no requirement other than being able to pass a test. This will force universities to both lower their prices and do better a job of teaching their curriculum.

Society as it is today assumes one thing across the world due to compulsory education. That thing is that we need to rely experts for every aspect of our knowledge and daily lives. Compulsory education up to "graduation" is something that is supported by universities because the entire compulsory schooling program is just a prolonged system of university entrance in the first place. You are taught only what you need to learn to get into a university in compulsory school. That is why the knowledge is so general and useless in every subject (in the United States). They want you to go to the experts and pay a ridiculous fee for the 'service' instead of becoming one on your own.

Currently, all extensive knowledge and especially college textbooks are kept strictly within those colleges. They are not available in other libraries (to my knowledge) and you certainly cannot find them online (again, I have searched for days, and this is to my direct knowledge). I personally would greatly like something akin to private subscription libraries that would be reservoirs of text books and various knowledge, and may become a major tool in aiding the "homeschooling" parent or any tutor who does not have books of their own. It would not be any more expensive than the schools we have today, and in fact would probably cost less, given that we would not need to build different buildings for each grade separation or hire a full queue of staff just to keep the grounds, let alone teach all of the children and oversee the institution. And then you have school nurses, therapists, counselors... The money has to come from somewhere for these extensive expenses, correct?

If we did not have schools, then the demand for tutors would be very high and they would not have to be so expensive as they are today. Everyone who needed them would have them, and prices would go down as a result. The law of supply and demand will work itself out.

What do you mean by that question? I mean that I am against compulsory schooling, or really 'schooling' of any kind when it comes down to it. I greatly prefer unschooling on all fronts.

Did you watch the video? I highly suggest that you do so. Most of my argument is contained within, and you did not in any way address the central point, and that is that schooling does the opposite of what many believe it is intended to do. It prolongs childhood and keeps children dull; especially, it keeps them mostly the same until they are adults. Children in schooling, at least in the Unites States—and to a lesser extent Europe—are taught the same things, year in and year out, so that the average person who has lived eighteen years knows roughly the same things as someone else who has lived for eighteen years. This makes them perfect for employees to already existing corporations, but what of independent thought and study? What of entrepreneurs?

And then you have the problem of school shaping the childrens' view of organized society. The average child, that is, the vast majority of children today, are sent to school at a very young age, and it is where they get their first impression of organized society. They are then forced to stay in that style of organized society until they are adults. When they are pushed out into the world full of other people who did the same thing when they were kids, they see the same society and it is seen as normal for bullying and competitiveness to be the driving force of life. As in school, everyone assumes that the basis of society is trying to please the 'teacher' or 'principal' instead of trying to be their own teacher or principal; they vie for the attention of their superiors and fight for favors in the same way that fish fight when their owner drops food into the tank. A pool of equals being fed by a 'boss' is what society has become due to compulsory education.

Why do you believe it is important at all? I can understand why you might think so if you see 'being employed' as the basis of life (and it is for the majority of the population these days) but it was not always this way. Long ago, many, many people made their own businesses and made a living by competing with their neighbors. There were no corporations and everything was "do it yourself". Oh, sure, prices were higher because they could not outsource labor, but everyone had more money for it, too (no income tax). The average single person in Jefferson and Franklin's time (from memory, not sure of the actual dates; check the video) made roughly the same amount of money as a couple working full-time today, accounting for inflation. How has schooling helped, exactly? The greatest change I can see it making is that children are still children by eighteen years of age, they know roughly the same things (making them standardized livestock for corporations), they see bullying as an inevitable part of life and they all face the flag when the song plays.

Neither of you answered my four questions. Did you not see them?

 

I'm very much against compulsory education, at least as it exists now. It's a complete waste of time, I'm really thankful I was given the opportunity to be homeschooled. It's a broken system and it needs to change. As for universities, they need an overhaul drastically as well, but I don't really hate anything about the system other than how ridiculously expensive it is in the US. Yeah it's definitely only in place to enforce corporate interests, that really can't be argued. But many people including myself want to work for corporations, so it really isn't a bad system as far as that goes.

But as you say, Makaze, there really should be some kind of alternative for those pursuing their own self-interests or entrepreneurship.

 

It's all well and good saying this but what would you suggest? Not everyone can be homeschooled, with most of the people I know their parents both have to work full time and simply wouldn't have the time to home-school them and would struggle to afford childcare for when the kids are at school and they have to be at work. They would not of been able to afford private tutors either. I also some really bright people whose parents just don't give a damn, if it was left up to them then they simple wouldn't have had any sort of education. Also I know several people who were it not for school, I'm willing to bet by this point they still wouldn't be able to read or write. Not everyone has your kind of motivation, Makaze. Surely, at least at an early stage, making sure everyone can read, write and do simple maths is a good thing. The system has problems, I don't deny that at all but what viable alternative is there? It's better than having no education system.

 

If I recall correctly, I heard a comedian make a comment that the education system was based by corporations so people would have basic knowledge so once they start working they aren't TOO stupid. It's all about shaping and making future drones. They don't want people who can think and make decisions for themselves.

But like the above post says, it's flawed as all hell but most kids nowadays have parents who both work and can't homeschool them. It's better to have something than nothing or to put it simply, "It ain't gonna get any better, it ain't gonna get any worse. Be happy with what you got."

 

I get the impression that neither of you read the thread or my second post.

While yes, I agree that being able to do those things is important, I hold that learning through real-life experiences is better than any schooling you may get. Especially at an early stage, it is very important to keep corporate and government interests out of children's minds. A child's first notion of organized society should never be a school because schools are not a healthy example of an acceptable society.

If both parents must work full-time and have no time for their children, then please remember that is not how it was before compulsory education and that we are actually less prosperous if you look at it in terms of how much time we have, even time to teach our children. That is another product of corporate interests. More work for less pay and higher prices so that you have to work more just to buy the products you are making. They create the environment that makes you feel you need the schools, and then they force you to pay for the schools and admit your children into them. They are perpetuating their interests for generations. Their victory has been complete, or so it seems.

Please remember that parents already pay for schools full of staff and expenses in the form of taxes, and that if they truly wished to (without the government threatening them), they could redirect that money to pay for a private tutor, or even a private school (truly private; imagine a bunch of tutors realizing they can make more money that way and founding a school) and get a higher quality education. Most people fail to realize that government or "public" programs are the same as private ones; you have to pay for them like any other. If not now, then later. The only true difference is that you are forced to pay for the school even if you pay a private tutor; that is why people cannot afford them. If you take out the "public" and compulsory schooling system and instead allow people to educate their children how they see fit, I think you will find that it is not so hard to pay for it after all.

To NemesisPrime, defending the status quo is the worst disservice anyone can do for him or herself. No one has ever made progress with your line of thinking. As I am wont to say, complacency is the bane of man. I hope that you find the will to perfect things before you die, or you will have had a meaningless existence according to me.

 

Define higher quality education. Is it an education that will make you wiser ? Or wealthier ? Lessons are only as good as their teacher, whatever program was or wasn' t thrown at them. My parents knew which public schools had the best word-of-mouth success rate (i.e. the best teachers), what ropes to pull to get me there, what options I should pick to land in the "right" classroom, where the best private teachers were if I seemed to need a little extra etc ...

Schools, may they be private or public, are industrialized. If we were to remove compulsory school rich parents would just be using their position in the social ladder to school their kids more than they already do. The best teachers would obviously be the priciest, how do I know that, overall, they won' t ask for more than what the state gave them before ? As for the poor parents, well, sucks to be you. No money, no school. What I' m saying here is : wouldn' t a school freed from state-approved programs remain industrialized anyway ? Worse, become even more industrialized ?

I barely had any economy lessons in my life (I picked the science road) so I may be missing something or spouting pure idiocy here, but surely compulsory school can' t be the only factor (if it is indeed a factor) to explain the fact that the inequality gap gets broader and broader each passing year, right ? Isn' t it, like, capitalism in a nutshell for you ?

Finally, the speech you posted above was uttered by a teacher, I don' t know what he was teaching exactly, but there' s a good chance that his diagnosis of the education system (and he' s far from being the only teacher to make such a diagnosis) was reflected in the lessons he gave.

I also hold this to be true, which is why compulsory school is not at the top spot in my "things to blame for our collective sheepishness" list. Kids spend a third of their time sleeping, another third at school ... but what' s the last third ? Entertainment. The thing is, arts are now just as industrialized as any other aspect of our society. That teacher in the video you linked is right, corporations do want us to believe that Coke Vs Pepsi is a subject worth debating. But who' s to blame for us biting ? Compulsory school ? Really ? Isn' t the the omnipresent advertising, and consumer society as a whole, a more obvious target ?

That being said, even if I was to remove every form of advertising from public schools, kids would still spend a third of their life right in the middle of a consumption-fest. Fortunately, as the teacher mentioned in the video you linked, we have the immense luck to live in countries where we can say whatever the hell we want to say without fear of being beaten to a bloody pulp for saying it.

[video=youtube;-njxKF8CkoU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-njxKF8CkoU&feature=related[/video]

I don' t believe that art and entertainment are mutually exclusive. Neither are critical thinking and industrialized education. Granted, the two rarely overlay.

For instance I consider "The Matrix" to be as much pure entertainment as it is an art piece. Likewise, just take a look at this very forum, there' s a debate corner, and at the same time there are IGN Vs Fanboy, Sony Vs Nintendo spam battles. I hope the internet will remain as untamed as it is right now as long as possible, because although industrialized art won' t do us much good to escape the consumerism society (I agree with Adorno on this) the internet, being less tied to money earning imperatives, can truly be used in a more mind-broadening fashion.

 

When I say higher quality, I mean a sort of educational experience that is built to pleas the customer and not a system where you pay for the service of being spoon fed whatever they have decided you should learn. I fail to see how it could get any more industrialized, if we are using the word in the same way. Or perhaps you did not understand. The true problem with education is that it is centralized, not just industrialized. If corporations profit from government schooling, then governments profit most of all. Education should be independent of any institution so that one's education may be from an objective standpoint. When being taught about your parents, you are to ask someone other than your parents about them. That is one reason why I feel that truly private education would be 'higher quality'.

Yes, that is likely. He would not have been able to remain a teacher if he had not been a part of the system that he so despises. First-hand experience to go with his facts should only strengthen them. Why do you mention it?

You are jumping the gun on that mindset. Everyone should know that a person's temperament and view towards society and what is successful is shaped by the way they are raised and their initial and strongest impressions of those things in young life. If children grow up to become consumers, and have only done so in the last century (as I believe to be the case), then what raised them into such childishness? Compulsory education was spread to feed industry, and so with this drastic change in child development came a new era of technology as well. As the children grew up in this school system, they developed a taste for consumerism and in all probability, those who created this entertainment and commercialism ordeal through television and 'entertainment' did so with honest intentions because they thought it was a good idea. They thought this because of the way that they were raised in compulsory schools.

If you listen to more of Gato's speeches, one of the main points that he brings up is that children were smarter and thought more critically before compulsory education, and that compulsory education prolonged childhood. He speaks of how the number of years you were required to be in school grew over time in both directions, spanning down to kindergarten and all of the way up until they are eighteen years old. Having lived in a world where everyone must go to school, I can certainly understand why you would imply that correlation equals causation here, but try to remember that kids were not raised by or on entertainment before compulsory education. It is more likely that the change is so drastic because where people had lived without schooling from childhood to adulthood before, the new generations were subject to it, and they raised their kids on entertainment and they in turn were fed into the compulsory schooling system which kept them bored of anything but the entertainment that you speak of. Compulsory schooling was created to aid the rise of technological progress and the entertainment industry. If children were raised by their parents or lived on their own, they would not be collectively anything, let alone collectively sheepish. Collective sheepishness can only exist when people are raised collectively. Does that make sense?

The entertainment industry is just that, an industry. Weren't we just talking about how schooling was a way to manufacture workers? Why wouldn't it be a way to manufacture consumers, as well? Corporations and governments alike greatly appreciate it when people both work without much forethought and consume with the same lack of it. It makes perfect sense from a business standpoint, and the results line up. What makes you claim that entertainment is causing complacency and not the school that was invented when it started? Compulsory education and consumerism rose at the same time. Many would blame technology for this, but again, what makes them assume that it was the technology that shaped their minds? Who showed them what the world is like? Who wanted them to become fascinated with entertainment? So few people look to schooling for the problems with society when it is easily the strongest proponent in a child's view of the outside world. Do not overlook the effects that institutions have on young minds.

A child who is not raised in a school is less likely to be a consumer (due to my knowledge; I have known many such people and far fewer have turned out as consumers than in schools; it is perhaps a 1:5 ratio). Those who become consumers do so because their parents raised them that way or lived that way in front of them, but where did their parents learn it? They went to school when they were kids like everyone else did. They could not tell you where else they got it other than from their parents, who also went to school. I do not believe that to be a coincidence.

 

To show that teachers (and by extension our parents and us) are not as enslaved to government-approved measures as you make them sound to be. A point I already discussed with you before. I think it' s thanks to the fact that our free speech wasn' t stolen from us.

Precisely. What you' re describing here is a cycle. My intention was not to say that compulsory school is not a part of the problem, I wanted to underline that :

- Entertainment and advertisement are fundamentally linked to state-approved education. I doubt changing one without changing the other would do us much good.

- Leaving education orientation decisions to already molded parents would be exactly the same as leaving the decisions to molded state employees.

- Teachers, even if they didn' t have state-approved directions to follow, would still be a product of this cycle and remain a cog in the consumption machine. I don' t see why removing state-approved guidelines would suddenly make their lessons more objective than they already partially are.

What to do then ?

I wouldn' t blame technology itself, but rather the emergence of planned obsolescence (which left most engineers at the time utterly nauseous). I blame the economists who enforced this aberration.

[video=youtube;0bxzU1HFC7Q]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bxzU1HFC7Q[/video]

 

Exceptions to the rule do not discredit the rule as one. While they are not, say, under surveillance, their orders are quite clear regarding what their job is to be, and most of them follow it to the letter. Or so I have heard from the teachers I have known.

I feel that if you remove schools, the rest will take care of itself. Without compulsory education, people will be freer thinkers even if their parents are still plagued, and teachers will not have the same jobs that they used to have. If you think that most teachers can easily adjust to a completely different style of teaching without thinking about the change and whether it is good or not, then I wonder what kind of teachers you must have had. It may take generations, but that is no different from how it was before compulsory education. The previous generation had not been in the system, and the following generation had. If you are to be consistent, then you must also argue that compulsory education would not work because you already have a society full of people who are under the influence of a life of true experience. With each generation, the amount of schooling required by law grew until it molded each generation almost on its own. The same would happen to people who were not forced into schools anymore.

Furthermore, there is no way to change the consumerist strategies of companies other than by educating people on the subject. A company is not breaking any law by making bad products. Wouldn't eliminating compulsory education contribute to that end?

As do I. That is almost as much to blame as compulsory schooling is, but I have trouble believing that it would have been accepted if schooling had not existed. The complacency that allowed companies to do this could not have existed without compulsory education; I stand by that.

Thank you for the video.

 

Not familiar with the American education system. If part of my argument is not applicable to the American schooling system, ignore it or school me otherwise (see what I did there?).

Yeah, and I'm thankful for that. If it weren't for experts, my coffee machine would most likely make something entirely unlike coffee.

I'm sure all those plumber universities out there agree with you.

Weren't you the one who said in a VM that he'd rather be a jack-of-all-trades?
Also, I don't think that knowledge was necessarily useless. I still understand and speak a fair bit of French and German, something I mostly likely wouldn't have taught myself of would have allowed anyone to teach me if they weren't compulsory subjects in high school. I have needed both on occasions.

Except that I am an apathetic airhead who doesn't really want to become an expert in anything. Thankfully, society has pushed me into at least disliking something less than all the other things and has even ended up piquing my interest a bit. I'm one would-be hopeless case that society salvaged, one mule who actually did start walking after a jolt to the butt.
I agree that the fee is indeed ridiculous in America though. It's not so bad here, fortunately.

Except such books and articles can be quite pricy themselves. For a library to stock enough to cater to everyone's educational needs (in multiple copies, in fact a great many copies), they'd need to spend a small fortune on that material alone. You can't rely on the goodwill of people willing to donate outdated textbooks like you can with any other library.

You'll still need school nurses, therapists and counselors. Whether I get bullied at school or at basketball training, I'll still need that shrink to talk those suidical thoughts out of my head. The difference is that he's included in the education fee in the case of compulsory schooling, and you'd have to pay for a laughably expensive private therapist in case of homeschooling.

I'd sign up for being a tutor. I'd teach all those dumb kids about unicorns existing and why Sarah Palin should have been president while mommy and daddy are at work, and if I play my cards right, would probably get away with it for a pretty long time.
Schools are more of a self-controlling organ and no single teacher would/should (I agree that the system is flawed here, but that can be changed relatively easily) be able to blurt out his horseshit opinions in a classroom for long without sanctions.

I neither did nor intend to.

Good. Let kids be kids.

Because compulsory schooling obviously rules out the possibility of becoming an entrepreneur, which is why there haven't been any new corporations for years.

Oh, I'm sorry. Your first sentence made it seem as if you were going to address a problem here. My mistake.
Also, I have never ever handed in an assignment or taken a test with the motivation of "pleasing the teacher" in mind nor can I think of someone in my year who did. That assumption is in fact, rather preposterous and I suggest you punch the person who gave you that idea in the face at least seven times.

Ambition is a fair lady, I'm afraid. If you can be employed, you are part of a hierarchy. I you're part of a hierarchy, you can be on top. And if you'll pardon me the innuendo: everyone wants to be on top.
The same goes for you. I've seen you treat debates like competitions, using terms and phrases such as "I guess this was a draw.". Are you seriously going to blame mandatory education for this? If anything, it's part of the human condition.

And yet, according to you, "organized society" such as schools are to blame for everyone seeing competitiveness as the driving force of life. Curious.

I don't think anything or anyone could have stopped corporations from forming because people were indeed competing with their neighbors.
If anything, going to school has helped people to remain a step ahead of the problem. If you're on the losing end of the carpet-weaving business, go to school, find out what you're good at, and try your luck with that.
Instead of specialties being passed on throughout generations to save on equipment, people are now able to develop their actual skills instead of being stuck with a profession they didn't have a gift for.

I am of course wild mass guessing because I know nothing of American history nor do I care to look it up, but my theory makes enough sense for it to be possible to be correct so I'll stick with it for now.

Before you ask, of coure I saw them. They're neatly lined with little dots to indicate them. I didn't feel like answering them though.
The way I see it, your system provides a deceptive kind of freedom which will more often than not lead to crippling overspecializations, as opposed to the compulsory schooling system which forces flexibility on you at least until graduation from high school. Neither strike me as ideal, and thus I don't see why we should replace something flawed with something flawed.

Also, I'm pretty sure that going to school has prevented me from becoming the wallflower I'm not. Again, school has been a welcome cure for those often overdosing on "I-can't-be-arsed" apathy such as myself.

 

There may be significant differences between our countries here, I' m not sure. Here are a few anecdotes to explain :

- One of my friends is a teacher. A few years ago our state decided to switch the official reading teaching method with a controversial one, she was one of the numerous teachers who flat-out disobeyed. Not a single teacher was fired for that.

- My first philosophy teacher chose to ignore the program completely. Funnily many students, who only had their exams grades in mind, started boycotting her courses and complaining to the higher-ups. In the end they were threatened of expulsion if they didn' t resume attending to all their courses, and she was never forced to drop her self-made program.

Although there are controls and a few absolutely forbidden things, teachers still have a fairly decent freedom margin here.

You meant "can' t", right ? I hope what I just said above clarified my stance. Styx raised a very good point though, don' t you think quite a few shady characters with dubious intentions would suddenly improvise themselves as "teachers" ? You know, gurus, cartel affiliates, your refreshing all-out nut-job etc ... "freer" does not necessarily equates "better" in my book. I would be absolutely delighted to improve and/or encourage teachers' freedom, but allowing all-out unrestricted freedom ? Hell no !

We could also plead for compulsory lessons about educated consumption/production, though I have a hunch you' re not gonna like this. I' d like to add that school isn' t the only available tool to educate people, you can take it upon yourself to inform people in other ways.

Hmmm, would people have been more reasonable consumers if they didn' t have mandatory education ? Maybe, maybe not. Since money was part of the equation long before compulsory schooling I suspect they would have anyway, but I guess we' ll never know for sure.

Spoiler

[video=youtube;GorHLQ-jLRQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GorHLQ-jLRQ[/video]

 

Ah, Styx. Always a pleasure to deal with your ego.

Heh. Would that your use of school applied to the meaning used previously.

Actually, no. I am willing to bet that no one person knows how to make a coffee machine in its entirety, nor how it works. There are no experts in coffee machine making, only in drawing up designs or being an expert at making a specific part perhaps. All of the people who made the machine relied on their "superiors" for instructions in order to complete the task given them, and all of the people who designed it would not know how to make it. The system is built such that they are all tied by an employer and are dependent on each other to complete the product; they have no independent expertise. I would not consider such people experts in coffee machine making.

Not all jobs require that, but vocational schools exist for those purposes if I recall correctly. Most employers and corporations especially also profit from compulsory school. If there were nothing to be gained from having people not go to a university, then universities would be compulsory as well.

Yes, but I would also like to be a master of all trades. The information that I got in compulsory schooling will not help me with many fields of study. Nor will it allow me to make enough money to learn a trade in detail. The rate at which kids are taught in schools is extremely slow by my standards, and the knowledge they teach is predominantly useless in their everyday lives. For an example, children are required to take a very basic course in Physics as well as Biology and Chemistry in the United States when they could be studying one of them at length. I have heard many accounts of people going on to study them in detail only to find that their previous knowledge was not only so basic and impractical as to be contemptible, but that some of the information was just plain incorrect. For instance, in high school Physics, they teach you that mass and energy always stay the same, period. Most people in the US do not have a correct understanding of the laws of thermodynamics due to their high school curriculum.

Language is indeed very useful, but again, I feel that a practical approach to learning is by far the best. Nearly all United States citizens took two years of a foreign language and remembered none of it because they neither made use of it nor learned it in an interesting or engaging way. I consider the Unites States education system to be among the very worst to have existed, it should be noted, and having a leg up on it is not much of accomplishment in my eyes.

Half of the point is that you were raised to be an apathetic airhead with no wish to become an expert because you are more valuable as a listless set of hands.

Why are they pricey? Isn't that because of the whole thing with 'needing experts' and having very few of them?

What makes you think that kids would have as much need of them without a schooling environment that encourages bullying? Bullying is often characterized as a consequence of environment, and rightly so. I do not feel that a basketball training group full of homeschooled kids would have much bullying. Do you?

The same argument can be said of parents; I find this invalid. Parents can teach their children those things while the teachers are asleep, or on summer vacation and so on. The difference is that the parents are doing it for free. Something having a larger scale does not make it any better as far as indoctrination goes. If anything, the wider the scale, the worse it is, because there will not be quite as much opposition when the child goes out into the world—everyone else will have been taught the same things, and very few questions will be asked.

Ah, too bad. It was rather informative regarding this discussion and the history of compulsory education (especially in the US).

I would agree, but you misunderstood the nature of the statement. It means that the period during which they are depending on others is prolonged, not that their "free spirit" is kept. Quite the opposite, in fact... When one uses the word "childhood" in the animal kingdom, they mean the period during which a child is dependent on its parents or others' help for its survival. It is the dependent and impressionable state that is being prolonged. Doing this actually causes them to conform more heavily and lose their spirit more completely to those they are dependent on rather than keep it.

It is hard to tell what tone you are using, but yes and no. There are others at play as well. Some example are patents, special taxes and licensing fees. Entrepreneurship is snuffed out by more than schooling. If it were not, then homeschoolers would be springing up corporations... Or so one might think.

Heh. I kind of expected that response, but not from you. Let me be more clear. Most people hate their bosses. However, they try to please them even if they have to cheat or take shortcuts to make it look good. It is the same idea as with teachers. Let me change the word to "appease" for more accuracy.

I am against hierarchies, if you had not noticed. I much prefer networks to something so primitive as becoming the king of the hill. A group of people who coordinate together based on a common goal rather than on some tier-based structure. I feel that each person involved should know what the "company head" knows. Also, anyone involved in a race like that should realize that the one on top will not be giving up his seat and that you are only profiting him by trying.

Not all competition is based on a hierarchy. There is a difference between playing chess with individuals and playing Monopoly with a group. I love games and I loved challenges, but I do not necessarily see winning as the overall point of any game. I hate the game Monopoly. Can you guess why?

Misguided competitiveness, I'm afraid. I know very few people who even aspire to be bosses or own a business. Their competition is not based in their own success so much as their success compared to their peers. In the same way, most students do not aspire to be teachers; they just aspire to be ahead of their peers in relation to them.

I fail to see how corporations could form, also because people had neighbors who would compete with them. Nearly every town or city would probably have its own local version of your business. Without patents or licensing laws that work in your favor, there would be no way to scale up to 'corporation' status... Trying to set up a second business in another area for a chain would be hard to do if someone else was already doing it just as well as you.

On the contrary, I have known many, many people whose skills were significantly suppressed by schools. Namely skills in the arts and entertainment or comedy. There are many children who are what you might call jumpy, talkative or otherwise energetic and when given the chance, show extreme interest or adept ability with artsy things such as dancing or singing. Because of compulsory schooling and the rise of psychiatric treatment for thousands of diagnoses in recent years to accompany it, these kids instead get labeled with ADD or some-such and get drugged down until they can sit still and grow up to work for corporations like everyone else. There are few exceptions to the rule of drugging out anomalies these days.

Another man made the same argument, and he is one of the smartest men I have known. A compromise is in order, it seems. I feel that the (truly) private 'schools' or tutor-based institutions I mentioned earlier would work nicely. Nothing is perfect, but surely that has less flaws than both systems alone?

There is also the basic argument that helping someone against their will is not help at all, which should be good enough for the elimination of the argument for compulsory education by itself.

On the contrary, I am very far from a wallflower and the vast majority of United States students I have met are the "I-can't-be-arsed" types. They care far more about where they will be next Friday and how they will avoid getting grounded than anything else facing them; especially their school work. At best they are worried about making deadlines or what their parents will say about their report cards, not concerned about learning things. The apathy towards education among schooled youth is so strong on this forum alone that I have trouble believing you would deny that it is there.

Once again, your country seems to be far better about such things. I have known many a teacher who has felt that they will get fired for even the slightest breach of political etiquette. Have you ever seen Dead Poet Society? It actually has a lot to say about this kind of thing.

That is correct, my apologies.

I feel that forcing people to be intelligent is by far the best way to facilitate progress. You could make the same argument in any scenario where you are suddenly given two or more deals to choose from instead of one that you already understand. Having a high class shoe, and medium class shoe and a low class shoe to choose from is better in my eyes and just having the middle class shoe. The fact that you have to judge which is best should not be that huge of a problem.

That would be just as bad, if not even more inefficient—in the end, you would be consuming even more resources in teaching the class. "God gave me a tail to keep the flies off, but I would sooner have no tail and no flies."

I feel that we would have been more reasonable consumers by necessity. People would have had more of a critical eye on things if they did not feel that government regulations had their backs on the matter. Ponzi schemes are outlawed... Except for credit card and loan companies? What? So many major changes made for the industrial era.

 

I never meant to say that they had to be experts on coffee machine making. I just meant that they had to be good at what they do, which is what the word expert means to me.

So you send your kid to a school anyway. Whether they learn a trade or academic knowledge doesn't make much of a difference aside from the breadth of subjects they'll get, which I'll address below. Point is, they will end up in a school environment. I thought you were against those?

They do this for a reason. In Belgium, reformations towards generalization of the high school package have been announced due to the sheer amount of drop-outs in the later years by pupils who still haven't figured out what the hell they want to do with their lives. I've never understood the difficulty of choosing a field, but there you are. Your system basically wants children and teenagers to specialize even sooner. It seems to me that you are overestimating their ability to make that choice, perhaps because you, like me, have never had any problems with it.

Out of the examples you could give, you probably picked the worst one. The exact sciences overlap so often that it's nothing short of essential to have a basic understanding of all three. Sure, you could learn the process of photosynthesis in-depth by cramming the different steps, subequations and byproducts. Or you could have taken a Chemistry course beforehand and understand exactly why that sly little dioxygen molecule is being released.

I won't reply to your points of information being incorrect and languages being only rudimentarily taught: they are not applicable to me.
(By comparison, I was taught German for 3 years, English for 5 years and French for 8 years. And those weren't my prime subjects.)

Except that the description doesn't fit the general populace. Indeed, most people I know are a fair bit more passionate about their field of expertise than I am. And yet even I, the apathetic airhead, am on the verge on becoming an expert. If your conspiracy theory is correct, which it isn't but let's assume it is for now, then it has failed horribly.

View the paragraph above. Besides, you have yet to tell us how your system will cure that apathy exactly, or even how it will not make things worse by giving them more freedom to do nothing.

There is no shortage of experts, get that silly idea out of your head already. More than 30 college students from Belgium and neighbouring countries alone are taking a brand-new master's degree that studies nothing but nematodes.
There isn't an angle that isn't being covered by a multitude of experts and even if there is, it won't be uncovered for long. There are tons of young scientific disciplines in Biology alone (by "young" I mean no more than a couple of decades old).

If anything, exchange projects, collaborations between universities and scholarships (the "globalisation of education") have made several degrees more accessible, with more motivated students as a result. I fail to see how homeschooling can provide an equivalent. You like networks, yet you want to degenerate the universities that form them and promote isolation instead.

Yes, I do. Discrimination of any form isn't a school-induced problem. Sports clubs will always have that better/worse than mentality, probably more than school does. Martial arts have obis indicating skill level, ball games have coaches who decide who makes the team, etc. Wherever you go, people will size you up and compare you with others. This is as true in school as it is in almost every area of life.

I find that difference to be pretty important actually. Wasn't the spearhead of your argument that homeschooling is the best way to spend money on education more efficiently?

Small-scale indoctrination may be less significant but in return it largely goes unnocited. Indoctrination on a larger scale is easier to identify and eliminate, which does make it better. I'd rather dodge a wrecking ball than get hit by a brick.

Actually, I didn't quite misunderstand and used that proverb very deliberately. It's okay for children to rely on adults for whatever, and just because they can be independent sooner, doesn't necessarily mean they should.

I found the sarcasm pretty blatant. And I disagree that schooling "snuffs out" entrepreneurship. Rather, they are being taught that an entrepreneurship entails more than selling jelly beans on the playground. If those difficulties are unnecessary bumps in the road to you, fine, but that's another debate entirely.
Also, if homeschoolers would be springing up corporations thanks to your system, wish them luck in finding employees for me. Wouldn't that get you right back where you started though? Or do you dream, perhaps, of booming businesses without employees? That would be the day, I'm sure.

People care for themselves and little else. It wouldn't be any different when your homeschooling system would be up and running. The only difference is the means by which they achieve what they want.

Networks have a center and a periphery. It can be argued that the former is more valuable than the latter and requires more responsibility. Compare it with a body. A human in its entirety is a wonderfully functional thing. When an arm gets cut off, well damn that's inconvenient then. You will lose a lot of your usefulness: no more lifting heavy boxes for you. That sucks, but if your head got cut off instead...well let's just say you wouldn't be lifting any more lightweight boxes either. And still, no one in his right mind will say that the human body is hierarchical. See what I mean?

I admit that more transparency wouldn't hurt the majority of companies, but I can't help but wonder who's to blame, if anyone at all. Do the employees even care about their company's marketing strategy? Would this really be any different if they were part of a "network" instead? I'm inclined to think they wouldn't.

And finally, the king of the hill won't give up his favorable spot in the pecking order, but he's also a human being and thus any other human being can in theory become him, or become quite like him. This is a tempting thought, and a good enough reason to think that entrepreneurship will never be in danger of extinction.

If it isn't about winning or losing, then why still call it competition, and why still point out who is winning and losing or when it is a draw?

I know a bunch of people who (want to) own a business and/or be a boss, and I know quite a few people who want to become teachers.
I don't see how this competitiveness is misguided. Whether you make your measure of success dependent or independent of another's achievements, it doesn't matter much. Both will urge you to give it your all. In fact, comparing yourself with your peers is a good way to avert low standards, since your peers mostly likely won't be waiting for you to catch up.

And this is the society you glorified in your previous post? One of eternal stasis with no possibility for growth. Oh joy, where do I sign up? Also, you completely forgot about something. I'll give you a hint: it's a game you hate very much. Without competition, what kind of safety net do you provide for entrepreneurs who charge however much they want? An embargo? Please...

Yeah yeah, society shatters dreams exactly the way Disney movies don't. What you fail to realize though, is that arts and entertainment are exactly the branches where being average isn't enough to make a living. That deaf dumb and blind kid sure plays a mean pinball (or whatever), but if another deaf, dumb and blind kid plays a slightly meaner pinball (or whatever), his chances of making it big shrink like Alice after drinking a potion.

Secondly, this is just a minor facet and more nit-picking than anything else, but I'd like you to show the correlation between ADD and "entertainment ability" (by lack of a better word) as a cold hard fact. For someone who likes citing his sources and showing hour-long links of veteran teachers, this shouldn't be a problem.

The library thing? I admit it wasn't a half bad idea. It takes away many of the problems of regular schools, but in my opinion, many of the benefits as well. Still, a clever idea.

This too, is something you cannot avoid. Decisions will always be made in your stead. When you're a homeschooled child, you have no say in what you want to learn either, at least not right off the bat, and rightly so. If my tutor would ask me what I wanted to learn and complied to that request, I'd answer "Dinosaurs" every time for at least three years in a row. Only in my teens (at earliest) will I have realized that measuring and carbon dating iguanodon claws is incredibly boring work, and that I've effectively wasted what could have been fruitful years.

EDIT:

I guess this must also be country-dependent. Some of the larger Belgian book store chains dedicate entire shops to selling college textbooks, but they're still open to the public. Besides, not all "textbooks" we use are designed specifically for college students (in fact most of the ones I need to use aren't). They're just plain old...books, although hunting for them if you're not a student can take some time. So yeah, our study material is at least somewhat accessible. You'd have to purchase them though; borrowing is not an option to my knowledge.

 

That is not what I meant in the sense of "expert". Everyone is taught to rely on someone who is "more" of an expert than they are. Even if you are very good at what you do, you are not led to be independent in it. The best chance any "expert" you know has at success is via a ladder where they rely on other experts to tell them what to do until they are given a promotion from said better experts. Independent excellence is not endorsed. That is what I mean.

That is a misconception. You spoke from what currently exists, I thought, and I brought those up because they currently exist. Also, a school setting "eventually" is no problem to me. It is schooling from a young age that bothers me; shaping a child's development from the start. Going into a school setting during or after starting puberty will not be nearly as damaging.

I agree that they do it for a reason, but it is largely unrelated to the number of drop-outs.

I hold that if children are raised in an environment that endorses specialization sooner, they will naturally adapt to specialize sooner and they will be better off for it. I believe that you underestimate the effect that the younger days of school have on that specialization process later on in kind.

However close they need to be, I feel that the amount of knowledge I have by the time I reach eighteen is quite limited in all three fields. I suppose what I wish for is a more extensive course for each than anything, as it feels intentionally dulled down when I learn so little in a year of study.

Not at all. The "conspiracy" does not want you to be apathetic. It wants you to be complacent with the hierarchical forms that exist in society around you. It wants your ambition to be only within the context of those hierarchies. It wants you and almost everyone you know to work for a boss from above. That is the purpose of this "conspiracy". Do you still think it is failing?

Getting you to admit the many faults in the current system is my goal. It should be obvious that I would be open to almost anything but centralized compulsory education.

Freedom to do nothing is an illusion. People will starve if they do nothing, and those who are willing to do something are the ones will live to continue the species. The apathy will be cured because children will not be safe without learning. They will not be nurtured in a school. People will no longer realize that they are in school and think, "Oh, that's alright then; that is their responsibility for now." Children today, or those I know, are indirectly and directly taught that being in school is all that you need to get by in society until you are eighteen. You do not even have to do well. If you are in a school, taking courses, then you are viewed as an acceptable human being.

It is only after you get out of school that you must have a job or you will starve. That pressure of starving without an education and then income is held off while children are kept in an environment where their largest concern is what other people think of them. The "freedom to do nothing" as you call it will reintroduce this pressure on younger children and that in itself will fight this apathy that you seem to think occurs either way. Children will also no longer have an excuse for being ignorant unless money is involved. If money is involved, then they have incentive to learn. Their curiosity will be driven up if they are not being taught something they are not interested in by default and by force.

I seek to promote self-education over being taught. I do not necessarily see universities as a bad thing, but I certainly see compulsory education as one. While it exists to support universities and corporations, I do not necessarily hate universities or even a network of them as bad. It is a monopoly that I dislike. If globalization comes with standardization of either teaching methods or coursework, then I am against it. Ideally, I would have something similar to the library I spoke of earlier, or even better, have the books available online.

When I say "experts", I mean people who tell you what to do. Management by others rather than self-management. People are expected and nurtured to leave aspects of their existence for others to take care of. To rely on the expertise of others rather than to make their decisions on their own. There are very few people today who do not mindlessly leave aspects of their lives to someone or other. Society in general was not like that a century ago.

Hm. Was the sports industry around before compulsory education? Why did it rise to become so popular? When did they start teaching sports? What makes you think that sports would be so popular without compulsory education, given its nature?

I have known many homeschoolers, and I have never encountered any bullying among the homeschooling kids. You are overestimating the effect of direct circumstances and underestimating the effect of nurtured mentalities. Being thrust into a sports group wherein there is pressure to bully without having a childhood that supports it will significantly reduce the chance of any bullying occurring. As a worst case scenario, the bullied will leave the team because they will feel that they do not have to put up with such an environment. It is not compulsory. That will enforce a kind of balance on the coaches and team leaders by itself, which will also reduce the incentive for bullying.

Not necessarily. My spearhead is that compulsory education is the worst way to do so. Nothing more than that.

The reason why I consider compulsory schooling worse than any other kind of indoctrination is because it makes use of indirect factors that work on the child's psyche without having to be spoken directly and makes sure that they are present no matter what. The greatest example is that children have to study in competition with others their age and they have their worth gauged by tests on what they are taught. These two factors naturally cause a child to view not only their personal validity to their teachers but also their validity to their peers based on the indoctrination in question.

Wait, so having large scale indoctrination is better because it is easier to identify? But that is a contradiction. You will have been indoctrinated along with everyone else, and if you see past it then you are an exception, so who is doing the identifying, and in what way does having even a larger group to fight against as the exception make it easier to eliminate?

I agree that is harder to identify small-scale indoctrination, but it is not harder to eliminate it. Once identified, it can be eliminated easily if society itself has not been indoctrinated by it on a large scale. Numbers will win out. Also, even if you do not identify and eliminate the backwater indoctrination, you need to look at the big picture. It is better to have a few people indoctrinated on the sides than have the majority of the race indoctrinated as a standard. Less indoctrination overall brings less harm to the greatest number. As an example, while you might have been indoctrinated, the rest of the town was not. You would rather not be indoctrinated by the fringe group, but indoctrinating everyone else just to save you is counter-productive.

I agree that we should not assume that they should, as we should not assume anything, but the argument in support of why they should is a strong one. The progress of the average mind in terms of intelligence and adaptation will only be helped by such a change. It is not necessary, but what is it not necessary for? What is your goal, or why shouldn't they become independent sooner? Though I hold that most people stay dependent on others their whole lives as things are.

I do not feel that it is another debate per say. I already brought up why they both contribute to it. They teach you that is is not simple in schools and then they make sure that it is not simple with laws. Therefore they end up teaching you the truth by making it true.

Homeschoolers would not be springing up corporations, I do not think, as corporations would lose their employees unless they payed very well. Exactly as you said. They would start small businesses, but they would not be able to start corporations very easily. No one would. I do not view this as a bad thing in the least.

You might as well have said, "People want things, you are not changing that." It is obvious. However, I am also changing what they want, as what they want is largely nurtured.

I would say that it is hierarchical, actually. You do not need the left hand in order for the right to function. Indeed, the brain sends signals to all parts of the body but they do not interact with each other independent of the brain. The body is arranged in a hierarchy like the coffee machine makers are in one; each end worker does a specific job but has no influence on the workers who do the other jobs. They only meet those other workers if the company head arranges it. It is the same with the hand and the foot, or the left and right hand, and so on; they do not interact without the head saying so. I would like to think that I am in my right mind to make such a comparison.

Unless of course you introduce patents, licensing fees and regulations that make starting a business almost impossible without already having a good sum of money. Though extinct is almost impossible anyway. It will only be extinct in widely-populated areas; rural communities will still be able to run local businesses independently. That does not mean that it is not being snuffed out intentionally.

Because the game is pointless without differing outcomes. That does not make one outcome objectively bad and the other one objectively good. One must lose in order for winning to mean something in a game of chess. The same is not true of hierarchical competition, such as a chess league with ranks or a tournament.

This kind of competitiveness is not misguided, it is misguiding. You are competing for social standing and a position or promotion rather than for personal well-being. It creates a competition for who can have the biggest house or the best car. The hierarchy is still there, even if they are less complacent with their standing in it.

There would be competition between businesses. Another company that makes a similar product cheaper will beat the more expensive business out.

A lack of extensive growth is by no means a bad thing. Resources are finite. Anyone who advocates a society when we keep creating new products to do the same things, buying them, and then throwing them out in time to buy the next one for the sake of growth is ignoring the fact that people do not need to do so and that they are wasting a huge amount of resources by doing so. A set of products that last forever are better for the individual than ten times as many products that last one or two years each.

Ah, you are partly right there, but entertainment spans a lot more than art. Consider the rise of spectator sports, which are a recent invention, for example. And the kind of "competition" that correlates with their existence.

There is no such study to my knowledge. Or, not one released. If there were, we would not have the problem in question. However, I would pose a similar request back to you: please explain to me why one never heard of the symptoms for ADD before it was invented and why it is such an over-used diagnosis today? Explain why it is so common and yet it has not been an issue in recorded history before psychologists started prescribing things for it. Explain why it is a "problem" for someone to "have ADD", and more importantly why it would have been a problem a century ago.

What benefits did you have in mind? I'm curious.

While that is true, I feel that it is up to the tutor to decide that. Even if it were standard for a tutor to teach what you were interested in (usually a tutor would have an expertise) they would still only work if the child would learn the basics. They would need to learn how to read, write and do basic math before anything else. I would not want to teach a child who could not do those things if I were going to teach one. Would you? Why would any tutor? Though eventually each tutor will branch off into something else, they would all want the kid to know enough to work with and have their own personal standards for their working conditions.

Yeah, I have never heard of that in the US. Most of the textbooks I know of in the US are written for colleges. Oh, and text books are extremely expensive here. I have never heard of one less than sixty dollars (maybe not even that low, but I don't want to overestimate), and I have heard of a good many over one hundred. You have to buy them from the university directly as far as I know. I would have to ask a friend where they bought them, but I am sure it was not at a public bookstore.

 

I lost interest but I don't want to give the impression that your arguments would have somehow cornered me. So this isn't written on a very inspired or motivated whim, but here goes...

I don't care about all that. I was simply going against your implication that experts wouldn't be valuable, which they are even if they are dependent on others' skills (which wouldn't be any different in a network, as you conveniently seem to forget).

A child won't shape its own development regardless of which system you're in, as I've pointed out already. But in schools, that child will be influenced by more different people, which is obviously preferable (which is an unbacked claim but you've been spewing so many of those that you have no choice but to take it at face value if you don't want your own debating strategy to fall apart completely).

Also, you'd send specialized kids to specialized schools and somehow don't expect it to lead to competition? That's ridiculous. Whenever I got picked last in P.E.'s volleyball matches, I comforted myself that I was among the best pupils in language subjects. But if I'd been studying languages at home, and then went to a specialized translator school, I'd be surrounded by like-minded students. If I were outclassed, I'd have few traits to counterbalance it because I had been spending all my time learning languages.
And yes, I would still think competitively. The notion that I wouldn't is delusional. See below.

It may have been just the government who gave that as a reason, but I still tend to trust them more than some teenager that just goes around and says "it's unrelated". You'll just have to excuse me for that.

Well I'm fairly sure they aren't so we're stuck here then, aren't we?
Except I presented a perfectly plausible model where early specialization proves to be dreadfully inefficient (the dinosaurs example), while you presented nothing of the sort. If you cannot even provide an example to back some kind of vague theory up, then why still hold on to it?

And you are still free to do so, in your spare time. If you are actually serious about making it big in physics, you can hit the books as soon as your classes have ended and know all about how a cyclotron works by the age of 9. You will most likely outshine your peers by the time you get to college, be invited in some project that only the elite of the elite are able to contribute to, and probably have your co-students eat your dust. Compulsory education does not prevent you from doing this.

You are not given the option to skip certain classes you deem useless, to be sure, but I've pointed out the reason behind this. The freedom to generalise or specialize is an illusion regardless, because your parents will direct your early life with you having absolutely no say in the matter anyway. But I've already mentioned that...several times.

You are making this debate more confusing than it needs to be. Please don't contradict yourself aga-

Neeeeeever mind.

Of course I do, because a lot of people I know don't work for a boss, and never intended to. And if they really are complacent, then why force a change on them? You are contradicting yourself yet again: you vigorously want to change something that you think people are cool with...because they are cool with it. Nice try though.

Except your goal should be trying to convince people why your system has fewer faults.
You're failing by the way. In fact, I entered this debate after an argument with my girlfriend and wanted to blow off some steam. I didn't even have a very strong opinion about it.

This only supports my suspicion that you really should get out more, and get to know people. The majority of the people I know do not see school as some kind of panacea against everything that's wrong with the world, and they certainly aren't content with children simply attending and not doing well. Every parent I know supports extra-educational activities, and would rather have their offspring doing well in school too. I really do wonder where you get all this bullshit, because not knowing this makes debating and trying to see things your way that much harder.

Also, you are contradicting your previous statement. If children are being taught that being in school is the most important thing, then why do they themselves see school as useless? Is this once again an example of your "conspiracy" failing?

So instead of manipulating them into thinking one thing, you are manipulating them into thinking something else. Clever plan, I really love it.
Secondly, money being used as an incentive isn't exactly ground-breaking. It is probably something that can fight apathy, but it is by no means exclusive to your system. If I wouldn't make money, I probably wouldn't work. Funny how that goes.
Furthermore, you have yet to say exactly how curiosity will be "driven up" if it isn't stimulated by any means. Compulsory education, like I've said countless times already, provides a basis in many possible fields of interest that may all pique a pupil's curiosity. This is not the primary factor for choice in all students, to be sure, but it has helped several of my former classmates. Even people like me, who just "chose something", are now interested in what they do, and pretty good at it to boot.

Yeah yeah yeah, you don't like being told what to do. We get it now.
Personally, I would find it extremely tiresome if I had to make every single decision myself. I'm the kind of person who would ruin his life (and possibly others) if I didn't have someone who would put me back in my place every now and then. And no, I'm fairly sure that I haven't been led to think like that. Why would society try to create a personality that has to be closely monitored in order to function instead of one that functions well on its own? Also see below.

The areas with the highest birth rate in the UK also have the most storks, so kids must come from storks! Ahahaha...No.

Also, you do realize that there is a sports industry in countries where education isn't and never has been compulsory, right? Right.
And if sports wouldn't be popular without compulsory education, you are erasing one more popular social gathering opportunity for kids, and are unwittingly giving my wallflower theory more credit. Why thank you.

Just to cure my ignorance; how do most homeschoolers make friends? I made most of my friends in school or sports clubs (which wouldn't be as popular without compulsory education according to your rhetorical question).

Oh so we've established that a childhood with compulsory education supports bullying? Funny. I remember no such resolved argument.

Or you could apply common sense here and think "Those tests are useful for seeing whether a certain pupil is ready to be taught harder stuff and ensure that (s)he doesn't just sit there with a dumb look on their face".

And yes, they will compare their results with others. Still sounds better than you overspecialized homeschooled kids with little to no common ground having a conversation like this:
Kid A: "My tutor taught me about agriculture in Yemen today."
Kid B: "Hey, that would sound cool if it didn't sound so boring. My tutor taught me about octane numbers today."
Kid A: "What numbers? Never mind, I don't care enough about that."
I'm sure that conversation will last a long time.
And the evils of comparing results are overrated too. Inspiring kids to do better, how dare they?

I meant teachers indoctrinating individually. It's a larger scale than tutors indoctrinating individual children, but not everyone in the country or even the school is being taught by that same teacher. Your argument is invalid.

But it's harder to identify, and therefore less likely to be "eliminated easily". Think of kids, and by extension parents, as a checkpoint. If even one child from the same class tells his mom that Mr. Wilson taught them that Pakistan is the capital of Mexico, that parent will complain and the falsehood will most likely be corrected. If a private tutor teaches a kid the same thing and that kid doesn't see a need to tell his mom, he will probably have wrong information for a pretty long time. A charismatic tutor can make your kid racist and sexist without you as a parent even knowing.

See above.

Because I liked my dependent but carefree time as a kid, which should be reason enough. Parents taking care of stuff you didn't have to worry about was the shit.
Earlier independence will make your kid slightly smarter, but to what end? To make up for a lack of intelligence that kids nowadays show? There is nothing of the sort. I'm not a big fan of fixing what isn't broken, and when the extremely precious currency of fun is on the line, there will be hell to pay. Again, let kids be kids.

How terrible of a society to inform children of the laws they should abide to!
I meant that the reasons behind those laws are another debate entirely. You'll probably think that is't another of society's ways to screw us over for its own gain, while I will have my doubts about that. I'm sure the economy in general can somehow be linked to education but I have no intention of digressing that far.

That's not what I said. If anything, I said it's almost impossible to stop corporations from forming.

Okay. Wait. Stop. Hold it. You are about to argue that human desires are largely nurtured instead of being a part of human nature, against someone who has been taught the exact opposite in their Biologial Antropology, Human Behavior and Macro-Evolution classes by people more intelligent than you are.
I have a book by one of my professors right here next to me. It explains in detail the relevance of dominance hierarchies in prehistoric hominids in our daily lives. Before you let your dignity tread on thin ice, ask yourself whether it is really so unlikely that competitiveness, group dependence and hierarchical thinking are in the nature of a social species such as man?

Whatever the case, you want to change what people want. This brings us to a fairly important question: why? Why change what people want instead of letting them be? Sounds like a chore not worth doing.

No, I just don't call mentalities nurtured when they aren't.

Yet it is also a network, as I hope you won't try to deny. Like I said, a network has a center and a periphery. You'll have a hard time trying to find an existing network that isn't hierarchical in some way. Every center is connected to more units than a peripherous unit, and thus requires a different level of responsibility. Not everyone has it in them to show that kind of responsibility, making those who can more valuable. Sound like a hierarchy? You'd be right.

I have thought this response quite often during your retort, but here I will say it out loud because I really do feel that other words fall short and the more appropriate reply is in fact:
Are you fucking kidding me?

So "something", by lack of a better word, is intentionally snuffing out entrepreneurship. Who could it be? The government? Which one then? I'm sure patents, licensing fees and regulations weren't all passed in the same legislature? Are governments conspiring across mandates or even generations? That'll be the day...
Who else then? Education? Fortunately not. Our universities have several minors that you can pick virtually regardless of your degree. One of them is actually called

Spoiler

Entrepreneurship

.
No joke. All scientific degrees can choose it, and a good amount of the non-scientific ones. I can buy its courses even if I have chosen another minor. Do you realize what this means? Not only is it anything but being snuffed out, it is being promoted outside of the obvious career choices. Does this sound like a society that's snuffing out entrepreneurship to you?

The game is equally pointless if those different outcomes aren't "objectively" better or worse than another. Hierarchies simply thrive on these distinctions.

Then you are still competing for personal well-being, or at least welfare. A high social standing has been beneficial to an individual since the animal kingdom, and it has hardly changed, only the way in which the benefits are expressed. Well-connected people fare better than secluded hermits. I shouldn't even have to say that to someone who likes networks.
And yes, the hierarchy is still there. People aren't "less complacent" to be in a hierarchy, they simply may not be content with their current position. This urges them to do better and not set low standards.

Which turns into an economical arms race that is the premise of rising corporations.
Carpet weaver beats other carpet weaver out of the water. Losing carpet weaver would like to join whom he can't beat. Winning carpet weaver thinks this is a good idea because they'd be big enough to weave carpets for the neighbouring town as well and outcompete the resident carpet weaver. Cash ensues.

What makes you think they would even try to make durable products if they can sell new ones to the same customer every few years? If your small businesses create products built to last, their services will be unnecessary before long. Only by growth and innovation, by making your product preferable over the competition's will you ever make anything beyond the absolute minimum.
If anything, it's this stasis mentality that would kill entrepreneurship because it leaves no room for innovation and creative ideas. It would, in other words, be incredibly boring.

Just a friendly piece of advice: living like cavemen is more ecologically justifiable than any of the current systems. If resource parsimony is your cup of tea, then be my guest in trying to have the ecological footprint of a sewing needle, but don't count on me to follow your example.

Point still stands. Friends of mine compete in the regional leagues of spectator sports. Do you think they'd be able to make a living out of it? I can assure you they won't.

Then why throw it in here as a fact?

Because lazy parents make good cash cows. If you are going to blame anyone, blame them, because I'm sure they'd be just as eager to drug up a homeschooled kid if he was a handful to them or their tutor. This has nothing to do with schooling and even if it did, I doubt it could be reversed even if mandatory schooling was no longer around. Also, I've said this before but parents have the final say in what their kid will learn. If a child is prevented from being the next Michael Jackson, it's because its parents think the odds of him becoming the next King Of Pop are staggeringly low. And like I've pointed out above, they have a point there.

Not falling for that. If you haven't seen them scattered around in my previous post, then your comprehensive reading skills have failed you miserably and I'd start to wonder why I still waste my time debating.

Not really seeing your point here to be honest, or how it would in some way contradict mine. Sorry.

EDIT: Don't bother replying when you're unbanned if it's for my sake you'd reply. I don't want to pick up a debate after several weeks.

 

I apologize for dropping this without developing or arguing anything, but the subject has been brought to my attention very recently and I haven' t looked it up beyond this wikipedia page. Just leaving it as food for thought.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education