The Political Thread

[The Legendary Shark]

I don't "vote," I exercise free will.

Rights are innate, privileges (what the state mis-labels "rights") are bestowed. There is a world of difference between the two.

I don't have an argument against educating people - I have an argument against educating people badly and schooling them in obedience to authority.

Yes, I do think children going to school should be optional. They should be excited by education and tempted into it - not forced - and if they show interest and/or promise in other areas they should be encouraged. School, it has to be remembered, isn't for everyone - as a fair few successful businesspeople can attest, and a fair few criminals too, I expect.

Er, people are already treated unequally due to personal differences - if they weren't, why would you be so staunch in your support of imposed top-down rights (privileges) and so dismissive of individual rights?

[Rara Avis]

I'm not going to lie but you really had me there!
This is some epic trolling the likes of which I have not seen for years.

[IndigoPrime]

Shark: school is already optional. It is not a legal requirement to send children to school. The legal requirement is that children must have an education. I note you neglected to mention how you'd deal with children whose parents refuse to educate them. I'd love for you to elaborate on this.

[Leigh S]

You  will get your oxygen and food Sharkie, while you attempt to just make the guards realise "they are the real prisoners".  You risk being killed by spoon man 1 in frustration that you wont dirty your fingers in case it is raining on the day you finally tunnel out, or by spoon man 2 who is (quite clearly) a dangerous psycopath who, if not for the efforts of spoon man 1, WOULD have blocked up the windows and door with that concrete.

Maybe you could dig with the spoon AND still consider the system incredibly flawed?  It isnt an either/or situation.

Consider you live in a concpetual space that is coloured yellow but you would like it to be blue - in fact, if the space was red, you would actually die. Every inhabitant in this space gets  to add a tiny drop of colour, a pixel if you will - they get to choose orange or green.  There are guys who would live it to be red - they will all splash a bit of orange aroound, moving the general colour of the space to orange.  Next round of colouring comes along and the choice now becomes "move back to yellow", or "would you prefer red"....?

Thankfully by excluding yourself from making a colour choice, you'll presumably be safe.  I get that you would rather not get involved in this potentially fatal "game", but this is the core problem of your argument each time - the only way you are going to convince everyone to "just be nice" is to move society to a place where that is possible - get everyone to see the benefits of green, before moving them into blue. 

I'm not going to lie but you really had me there!
This is some epic trolling the likes of which I have not seen for years.

Yeah, Sharkie always drags you back in for more of his "Most people are quite capable of being nice and doing the right thing without any coercion, so we dont need other people telling us what to do as those other people in Government are mostly terrible  non humans with hideous motives aimed mostly at directly curtailing my freedom to not be a nice person - but of course most people are quite capable of being nice and do the right thing....." and on and on.

[IndigoPrime]

Hence my question about compelling parents to educate their children, which Shark neatly avoided answering.

[Leigh S]

I believe Sharky has said in the past that it would just be societal pressure to not be a jerk  that would work on them,because the only reason people are jerks now is that they have Gvts telling them not to be.

Maybe they'd find themselves ostracised by their community, maybe unable to get served in the local pub or have the local tradesmen fix their plumbing? Maybe labelled witch or communist?   Who needs coercion by Government when you have unleashed people power? Who need Big Brother when you have Big Society?

Shark: school is already optional. It is not a legal requirement to send children to school. The legal requirement is that children must have an education. I note you neglected to mention how you'd deal with children whose parents refuse to educate them. I'd love for you to elaborate on this.

[Rara Avis]

Don't they have the right to educate their children to be jerks?

[sheridan]

I did write a bit about what happens when education isn't compulsory (mainly that parents in poverty have no choice but to put young children to work instead of sending them off to school), but the internet ate it all and didn't post it, so I'm going to leave this link here:

1870 Education Act

The issue of making education compulsory for children had not been settled by the Act. The 1876 Royal Commission on the Factory Acts recommended that education be made compulsory in order to stop child labour. In 1880 a further Education Act finally made school attendance compulsory between the ages of five and ten, though by the early 1890s attendance within this age group was falling short at 82 per cent.

Many children worked outside school hours - in 1901 the figure was put at 300,000 - and truancy was a major problem due to the fact that parents could not afford to give up income earned by their children.

Fees were also payable until a change in the law in 1891. Further legislation in 1893 extended the age of compulsory attendance to 11, and in 1899 to 12.

Compulsory education was also extended to blind and deaf children under the Elementary Education (Blind and Deaf Children) Act of 1893, which established special schools. Similar provision was made for physically-impaired children in the Elementary Education (Defective and Epileptic Children) Act of 1899.

[sheridan]

In short, the choices are compulsory education (either at a state-funded school, at home or a few other routes) or child labour except for those lucky (?) enough to attend religious schools - though I have a few more things to say about religious schools...

[Rara Avis]

Maybe Shark is a part of Big Chimney and wants access to a tiny workforce ...

[The Legendary Shark]

I'm not going to lie but you really had me there!
This is some epic trolling the likes of which I have not seen for years.

Nice bit of ad hominem to end on. Well done.

Shark: school is already optional. It is not a legal requirement to send children to school. The legal requirement is that children must have an education. I note you neglected to mention how you'd deal with children whose parents refuse to educate them. I'd love for you to elaborate on this.

"Parents can be issued a Fixed Penalty Notice
by the Local Authority for their child's non-
attendance. The penalty is £60 and this rises to
£120 if paid after 21 days but within 28 days.
Each Local Authority should publish a 'Code of
Conduct' for Fixed Penalty Notices. The School's
headteacher decides if they wish to fine
unauthorised absences from school by issuing a
Fixed Penalty Notice. The headteacher then
requests by a referral to the Local Authority to
issue a fixed Penalty Notice on his or her
behalf.
"There is no right of appeal against a Fixed
Penalty Notice. If this is not paid, the Local
Authority can proceed to prosecution or
withdraw the notice. The Local Authority can
also prosecute parents for non-attendance
without issuing a Fixed Penalty Notice. Only the
Local Authority can prosecute parents and they
must fund all associated costs. Local authorities
must conduct its investigations in line with the
Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE)."

Seems like a fairly legal requirement to me.

Okay, so that's not exactly what you were talking about.

According to the .gov website, "You must make sure your child receives a full-time education from the age of 5, but you do not have to follow the national curriculum." I did not know this, especially the part about not having to follow the national curriculum, and I think it's a good thing.

However, the next paragraph reads, "The council can make an 'informal enquiry' to check your child is getting a suitable education at home. They can serve a school attendance order if they think your child needs to be taught at school."

So, an 'informal enquiry' (their quotation marks) can lead to a formal order. The authorities still get to decide what is a 'suitable education' (my quotation marks), and to order state school attendance anyway.

You're right, I didn't - and gave my reasons.

[sheridan]

Religious schools?

News of a wedding with four hundred guests (around ninety times the legal limit) held at a school near where I used to live prompted me to look in to the history of this school.  Apparently they have such charming policies as telling their pupils not to answer any exam questions concerning evolution (this was after they'd been found to be censoring exam papers), that the most important outcome for their (female) pupils is to become successful mothers, that girls shouldn't go to university, censorship of homosexuality in GCSE textbooks and removal of mentions of women socialising with men.

And I thought the compulsory hymns at my CofE school were a bit extreme...

[sheridan]

Oh, and for some reason the state is funding that school for religious extremists - not sure why, but there you go.

[Leigh S]

However, the next paragraph reads, "The council can make an 'informal enquiry' to check your child is getting a suitable education at home. They can serve a school attendance order if they think your child needs to be taught at school."

So, an 'informal enquiry' (their quotation marks) can lead to a formal order. The authorities still get to decide what is a 'suitable education' (my quotation marks), and to order state school attendance anyway.

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.

[The Legendary Shark]

In short, the choices are compulsory education (either at a state-funded school, at home or a few other routes) or child labour except for those lucky (?) enough to attend religious schools - though I have a few more things to say about religious schools...

This is why education cannot be addressed in a vacuum - neither can government, religion,  infrastructure, banking, corporatism, law,  healthcare, etc., etc. All parts of society are interconnected and interdependent. There is no re-set switch, no "pull for Utopia" lever, no Good Citizens' Bible. It would be next to impossible, I believe, to reform any one part in isolation.

I have said many times before that I cannot change the world, I can only change my world. If people want to change their own worlds, either individually or in consenting groups then that's great, good luck to them - if I like what they're doing I'll join in. If people like their worlds as they are then that's great too, good luck to them - but if I don't like what they're doing I won't join in - even if they order me to.