The Political Thread

[The Legendary Shark]

So in Sharky World, there is no one to "enforce/check" that the parent isnt just sitting the child in front of their Playstation and calling that education, but at least "The Man" doesnt get to decide, kid, and you are level 257 on GTA?  Cool!

Here;s a thing - I was top of my class at school - there was no compulsory careers advice and my parents, bless em, didnt really involve themselves in asking.  So as a 15 to 18 yr old, I was left to my own devices - Sharky freedom, but actually, the heavy hand of a Big Brother to step in with some support would have been most welcome.  In Sharky World, we are all in the best possible world.

If I thought we were all in the best possible world, why would I be constantly claiming the opposite?

If you have a read of that interview I posted earlier, you will see how a teacher with 30 years of experience engaged with disinterested and even disruptive students.

[IndigoPrime]

Again: If parents are not compelled to educate their children, that means some will choose not to, and those children will suffer. How would you deal with that on a societal basis?

[The Legendary Shark]

Would you need to be compelled?

Hypothetically, if we lived in 1930s Germany and all the state and private schools drummed Nazi ideology into children, would you need to be compelled then?

Or, if we lived in the 23rd Century and all the schools were run by the Federation with its ideology of cooperation and understanding, would you need to be compelled then?

[IndigoPrime]

You are avoiding the question, again. Would I need to be compelled? No.

But as I've said already: if parents are not compelled to educate their children, that means some will choose not to, and those children will suffer. How do you deal with that?

[The Legendary Shark]

Again, why shift the argument to solutions when one side doesn't believe  there's a problem, or believe that the problems are different?

[IndigoPrime]

I'm not shifting any argument. You, pages back, said you disagreed with that area of Green policy because it compels parents to educate their children. My point is that in taking that position, you leave vulnerable children at risk—and you don't seem to be offering any suggestion as to how that can be dealt with other than "remake all of society in the manner I'd be happy with, and in a way that ensures every single parent is a good actor". Or perhaps I'm missing something, but that's certainly how things are coming across.

[The Legendary Shark]

If you want a "one size fits all" solution from me you'll be disappointed - you already have that.

So, be specific. Invent or convey a specific case, tell me about the family, their situation, their beliefs, and what the perceived problem is.

[sintec]

There are plenty of accounts of religious parents in the US with a strong beliefs in "the end times" whose home schooling regime consisted of nothing but bible studies and music (because being able to sing God's praises is of value). They see no point in study beyond that because the rapture is coming so it'll just be wasted time. That's made life very difficult for those children who have moved away from those communities later in life.

Or how about the impoverished family who (given freedom of choice) decide that sending their child out to work a menial job to bring in extra £s is better than educating them.  In the short term that may well be true for the family but in the long term that childs future job prospects may be restricted due to their lack of formal education.

Having known a few people who have fallen through the cracks of the education system for various reasons I've witnessed the struggle they've had to re-establish a "normal" life later on. For some that wasn't possible and in the saddest case it almost certainly contributed to depression and then suicide.

[IndigoPrime]

If you want a "one size fits all" solution from me you'll be disappointed - you already have that.

From existing government, sure. But you said you couldn't get on board with any policy that compels anyone to do anything. My counterpoint to that was to ask what you would do should a parent decide to not educate their child, thereby negatively impacting on the child. I'm not sure why this needs me to provide a backstory for every example this might happen with. (I see Sintec's provided a few though.)

[The Legendary Shark]

In a libertarian or anarchic society, the highest law is do no harm.

If parents are doing harm then it is perfectly legitimate for police, courts, social workers, etc. to intervene. No rulers does not mean no rules. A non-violent system does not mean no system.

Sintec:

Case 1: Religious education. Fine. In this case, the only thing to do is tempt students to your school. Advertising would probably work.

Case 2: The working child. A lot can be learned from work. In this case, if poverty is the only driver, the local community can pay the parents their extra £5 per week or provide a home tutor. If the job is actually dangerous then the law kicks in and police etc. can get involved.

3: Fallen through the cracks. Some schools may be open 24 hours a day, providing walk-in educational help for anyone at any time.

Just forcing some people (me included) to go along just turns them against the system. Helping people (me included) turns them to it.

[IndigoPrime]

In a libertarian or anarchic society, the highest law is do no harm.
[...]
Case 1: Religious education. Fine. In this case, the only thing to do is tempt students to your school. Advertising would probably work.

Sorry, Shark, but this makes no sense. If a child is being educated to a very specific, extreme and narrow ideology, due to their parents, they are arguably being harmed. How on earth do advertising and temptation help when the parents are bad actors within a specific and extreme worldview?

The children won't have agency to make a decision themselves. This is why we arguably need oversight that ensures children are given the tools they need to thrive, rather than spending their entire time being taught about their parents' god—or, worse, having their heads stuffed full of shite because their parents and like-minded followers do not believe in science, to pick one example.

Case 2: The working child. A lot can be learned from work.

At what age? 15? 12? 8? 5? A family has decided it will not educate its 7yo, because said child can work for a living. The job isn't phsycailly dangerous, but, hey, they're not compelled to educate their child. So what then? The child gets no education, but brings home minimum wage. Not good for them.

3: Fallen through the cracks. Some schools may be open 24 hours a day, providing walk-in educational help for anyone at any time.

Schools open 24/7? In what reality is this even possible?

Just forcing some people (me included) to go along just turns them against the system.

I have big problems with the existing English system, not least its tendency towards children being property of the state and things like mandatory daily worship (which is one of the benefits of lockdown—that has been abandoned entirely by mini-IP's school). The non-attendance fine system, e.g, is not well structured, and in our county there's a sense of 'pass the buck' between the schools and the LA. But I still am fully in favour of a system where parents are—at some level—compelled to, for a defined period, educate their children to a broadly agreed standard.

The problem with—

In a libertarian or anarchic society, the highest law is do no harm.

—is that by not compelling parents to educate children and not providing some basic guidelines on that, the children do come to harm. That's the point.

[IndigoPrime]

It's also interesting to see the split here between the ideas of a liberal society (which is arguably what parties like the English/Welsh Greens what) and a libertarian society, which is a rare position in the UK, given that it's most typically embraced by the right. (The British right are mostly somewhat libertarian when it comes to economics, but are ultimately authoritarian in terms of societal outlook.)

[sintec]

I pretty much agree with you on 2 - if the issue is poverty then solve the poverty problem. How you do that then becomes the question but that's a separate point.  I certainly wouldn't dispute that there's plenty to learn from working, although I intentionally specified a menial job as (generally) those offer less opportunity to learn. I'd certainly agree that our societies focus on exams and paper learning needs a rethink as it's a somewhat narrow focus on knowledge.

The problem with your other 2 points is that it isn't the students who are making the choice. It's the parents of those students making a choice on their behalf. Is the best we can offer really just to help them catch up once they're old enough to realise they were indoctrinated and/or deprived?

Intervention in these kind of situations is definitely an egregious form of violence that states inflict on families. Overriding parental choice is not something which should be taken lightly. But there has to be a balance between a parents freedom to choose and a childs right to a decent rounded education. I feel your reply to 1 is weighing the parents right as greater than the childs in this situation, personally I view that situation as harmful to the child and requiring intervention.

Again I completely we absolutely should be making adult education cheaper and easier to access. Both to help those who fall through the cracks and also to help those who want to retrain or just want to learn for the pleasure of learning. By that time it can often be a huge struggle to catch up though should we not try to ensure people don't get left behind where possible?

[The Legendary Shark]

That is what courts are for. If a child (or anyone) is being harmed then that can be lawfully stopped. If the child is not being harmed then, as unpalatable as it might be to others, there's really no cause for anyone else to intervene directly.

Advertising can get people to spend money on almost anything - including buying shares in utilities they already own. In its propaganda form it can inflame people to genocide. It's a multi-billion dollar global industry for a reason and I feel sure it can sell the idea of education to many, but probably not all, anti-educators.

I've worked for as long as I can remember. My first job was helping my Mum, Granny, and a couple of neighbours shilling shrimps. Later I worked with my Dad, who was a diesel fitter. He taught me tons of practical stuff and left me with a lifelong love for fixing things and bodging things together out of rubbish and scrap. Sure, I went to school as well but, to be honest, I preferred working. It gave me a sense of pride in a job well done and entailed lots of concomitant learning in reading and maths as well as inspiring self-confidence and exposing me to the wider world.
It was exciting and interesting whereas school was dull and boring.

I said some schools may be open 24 hours a day, not just "schools." Some supermarkets are open 24/7. Petrol stations. Hotels. Police stations. Fire stations. Kebab shops. Hospitals. Is there really no reality in which you can see some all-night schools in areas that need them?


Freedom does not mean doing whatever the Hell one wants and hang the consequences. Indeed, living in a free society places a greater burden of responsibility on everyone.

I agree that the state treating children (all of us, really) as property is wrong - but that's the way it sees us. It's one of my biggest bugbears. Thing is, if I say to the state "you don't own me," then I have to concede that it doesn't own anyone else, either. And as one only has jurisdiction over one's own property (or one's own self), then everyone else must have that same right. So if the state can't treat people as property, forcing them to do whatever, then neither can I.

If someone is teaching their children that the Earth is flat, for example, I'm perfectly at liberty to argue and disagree but not to interfere directly. That is frustrating, sure, but ultimately not my business no matter how much I might wish it was.

[The Legendary Shark]

Sintec - you're absolutely right, probably the first and most important thing is to ask the children what they want as well as the parents. Ideally, solutions should be tailored to individual circumstances.

I.P. - the elites tend to be very libertarian amongst themselves as well. I think this is because they have so much money/clout that they can basically go anywhere and do anything, hence monsters like Jeffrey Epstein. The downside is that they use all of their libertarian rights and very few, if any, of the responsibilities.

Curiously, the Earth is technically a libertarian or anarchist planet because it doesn't have a single ruler or state.

Yet.