Compulsory Education

Sorry for the double post, I just wanted to say something about this, as it's another topic I'm quite invested in. But it's a bit of a tangent from the central point. I have very mixed feelings about compulsory education. On the one hand, I feel very strongly that children's agency is important. I have seen multiple cases where compulsory education was doing more harm than good to an individual. They regarded school as a prison, and education as torture. They were not learning, and in the process of trying to educate them anyway, we poisoned them against learning for life. This is wrong. We need off-ramps ... even if they're carefully guarded off-ramps ... so that extreme cases like this don't happen. On the other hand, I can see the forest for the trees. If education were fully optional, the types of people who would opt out are exactly the people who need it most. You and I both know that kids with rich parents would get educated regardless of whether the government mandates it or even funds it. The gap between the haves and the have-nots would only get wider, and that's what social injustice looks like. Pragmatically, on a large scale, I understand why education is compulsory. It makes a more equitable society. Yes, I get that there are implementation problems ... like education in poor neighborhoods is inferior ... so compulsory education is not living up to its promise. Even so, I can't deny that there is at least a positive impact overall. And on the third hand (lol), somewhere in the middle, I recognize that kids today are not being taught to struggle. Optional education would only exacerbate this problem. The education system we have is being nerfed a lot ... you can't be held back for failure anymore. Kids can ditch more than half their classes and still pass. I don't know what we're actually getting out of education anymore. So yeah, I want to hate compulsory education, but I can't figure what a good alternative would look like. Okay, this turned into more of a rant than an argument. Take it for what it's worth. lol (hugs) -= ryvid =-