Published on 12, July, 2020
I represent Generation Y. As in, Why?
We were the Guinea Pigs for what was to become. The weekends were spent watching US TV, and being mislead by our Teachers and Lecturers during the week.
While those who left school at sixteen developed careers, homes and families; we became Bums with Degrees.
And, now, most Teachers were the kids of tradesmen. It's the work ethic. Which we denied ourselves, through people-pleasing.
There is a lot to unpack there.
So lets start with leaving home and school at 16. In 1918 there was the so called Fisher Act that raised the school leaving age to 14. But there was a section that said if you were 14 - 18 you would have to do compulsory part time schooling alongside part time work. It was never implemented but it was planed and put in law. You see in the industrial revolution teenagers and even pre teen children worked to support the family. Families couldn't support their children with out this on their wages. It's why things like free meals at school were considered important. Society had 3 problems and wasn't sure how to solve them.
So forcing teens to study but leaving them some time for work was a compromise for 2 and 3 and banning work and making school compulsory and free was the compromise for 1 and 3 for pre teen children. That is what was supposed to happen. But then WW1 happened and this was all considered too expensive. What happened instead was that the school leaving age would be raised once to 15 and then again to 16. By the 90s you had a legal obligation to 'maintain' your child till 16 or 19 if they were in full time education. In fact for a period in the 80s 16-17 year olds in care homes in full time work had to pay contributions to the council in place of their parents. So this weird situation seems to have existed through out much of the 20th century where you were responsible for a 16-18 year old unmarried child of yours but not always finically responsible.
For most of the late 20th century 16-17 year olds were effectively pseudo adults in the eyes of the law. In those days poor parents often did 'kick out' their kids and tell them to get jobs although its not at all clear if they were legally allowed to force this on their kids, especially if they could get into a collage. Rich parents typically encouraged their kids to continue school and supported them financially. But as economic conditions improved more and more parents preferred to let their kids finish school till the government recently felt comfortable forcing the poorest to do this as well.
But now they have exactly the same issue with universities. Who is going to pay to feed and house the students who don't work? And I have to say I'm seeing a trend in universities where undergrad students are being infantilised by their universities and student unions more and more. Universities are becoming more and more school like with staff chasing students with attendance lists and disapplinory hearings. Paradoxically since now most of them 'pay' for it themselves you might think why not let them goof off; they are adults and can ruin their lives with their own money if they want. Except it isn't their money it comes from the government who then bleeds them dry from years to come. So once again its the government, by insisting that universities operate like educational sausage machines, that is driving the infantilisation of young adults.
There has been an 'experiment' in funding and compelling education going on since the early 20th century and it's been artificially pushing the age of what society thinks of as an adults upwards. Initially because the government wanted to push the cost of supporting students on to parents and later because it chose to push the cost on to students future selves. So we now have this weird situation where 'children' are having and raising babies with each other at 14 but don't really get treated like adults till they are 18 or in some cases even 21. The discrepancy between biology and society can only be stretched so far before something snaps.
Andrew Carnegie, and Bill Gates' Grandad, pushed that agenda; in the United States. The rest of the world followed suit.
It's about cradle-to-grave dependency.
I don’t think we can avoid dependency in life. Young children have always been dependent on their parents. And for that matter parents have always been dependent on their children in old age. And when there is no parent or no child the government has always had to step in assuming there was a government.
i’m not opposed to government support. i’m opposed to it leading to infantilisetion. I don’t know what the politics around education in America were. I do know the driving factors are very likely to have been similar to those over here. The need for educated engineers and clerical staff, specialists in various crafts and trades. The industrial revolution brought automation, that automation required more skilled professions, and that required more education.
I am not saying that education is bad or wasn’t needed or isn’t needed now. I’m saying it shouldn’t be done in a way that infantilises people.
I am a proponent of lifelong education. I think when you’re 30 or 40 something etc you should still be participating in education. Education and employment should coexist throughout the entire working life. And obviously there is no way to pay for that through loans or by putting the burden on parents.
Obviously the cost has to be borne by the government or employers or both. One way to shift the cost onto employers would be to create mandatory education holidays. A certain number of additional paid days off employers are required to give employees but that employees can only use for the purposes of education.
A way of shifting the burden onto the government would be to allow unemployed people to still draw a full set of benefits even if they are in full-time education for say maybe one continuous year. That way individuals could take career breaks to go into education in an affordable way.
Right now education is associated with a loss of control over your own life. The student is told what to do, when to do it and how to do it and told at great length about what they are not allowed to do. That’s certainly true of secondary education and unfortunately it’s becoming more and more true of tertiary education.
I personally think a world in which young people, including teenagers, could have more experience of earning and controlling their own money, managing their own time, and determining their own living arrangements would be a good thing. But for teenagers and to a lesser extent young adult students The only way that could happen is if the government is prepared to accept that it will have to fund peoples Studies including the living expenses of being a student.
And that’s simply not going to happen. The government is already terrified of the consequences of people turning away from university because of rising tuition fees. What that will do to youth unemployment figures. The notion of the state having to contribute money directly to the upkeep of teenage students (which is probably what they would’ve had to have done if they wanted to raise mandatory education to the age of 18 at the start of the 20th century) through benefits or otherwise would be equally terrifying to them.
The government wonders why birth rates are declining. Perhaps because having children is too expensive. After all even with student loans The bank of mum and dad tends to shell out a lot of money for their young adult student children.
if our societies need this secondary and tertiary education, then as a society we need to be honest that the cost includes the cost of maintaining the students who aren’t working and that really those costs should be coming out of the national pot just as much as the cost of the tuition should.