Scxhool leaving age raised to 17 years of age. Do the young people actually want to be there? ?

Question

I left at 15 years of age and was glad to get out and into the comparative freedom of a job. I did not those days have the opportunity of O levels for which I would have stayed or G.C.S.E. the latter of which is now discredited with everyone except educationalists.

Definition of an educationalist: A teacher who can not teach but tells everyone else how to

Answer 1

Why do people make the assumption that school is the best place for all teenagers.

Some people are just not academic, or simply do not enjoy academia,  and the best place for them would be on a training programme, or straight into employment.

Give young people the credit of knowing their own mind.  There are all sorts of routes back into Further Education when and if the time is right.  There is no point funding the education of people who do not want to be educated - just think of those results tables.

Answer 2

Yeah! lets drop the whole education thing altogether. Seeing as by your theory the kids learn nothing at school anyway why send them? We may as well close all the schools and save some of the tax payers money. Here in Japan kids usually attend school till they are 18 and most go to Uni or college after to gain further qualifications. Crime is a lot lower, as is violence and you certainly don't get kids hanging on street corners and attacking old people. As you said, you didn't go to school after the age of 15 which is probably why you came up with the dumb point of teachers not being able to teach. If I put you in a room with a physics teacher and asked you both to explain, in depth the theory of relativity I guess you would be able to do it so much better.

Answer 3

Your grasp of syntax shows that you would have benefited.   So, yes, it is right.

Answer 4

Not all of them want to be. It doesn't allow for different learning styles or personal circumstances.

Some people aren't academic. One of the brighter girls I knew left at 16, because she simply wasn't academically minded. Instead she went on to retail work and part time study, and gained her qualifications that way. It suited her style of learning more than a classroom.

The other problem with forcing people to be in school who don't want to be (or who aren't suited for it) is the disruption to the students who do want to be there. A miserable student won't learn from the best teacher in the world.

There is an interesting double standard: at age 16 you are now mature enough to have s*x, but not to leave school. As a child can leave home at 16, a parent could withdraw financial support, leaving a 16-17 unable to work as they have to attend school, but with no means of financial support. Not a good way to encourage them to learn.

Answer 5

So, you're telling us you're now wise enough to judge who can teach and who cannot?   Definition of an arrogant Idiot:  Someone who knows a good teacher, from a bad teacher, even though he hasn't been in a classroom since he was fifteen years old!  You know, the reason adults should make the decision for their kids to stay in  school is because kids make immature decisions.

ADD:  In a few days, I will be 80 years old.  Top that!  My two daughters and a grand-daughter are all teachers, and my son-in-law is Asst. Supt of schools Director of Human Resources.   I know lots about teachers and all of them are struggling to meet the requirements of the Idiots in Washington, who have never taught kids, but insist that "No Child Left Behind" is working!   It is not...and never will as long as there are so many non-English-speaking kids in our schools and so much poverty!   Those two problems, until they are seriously addressed, are insurmountable.

Answer 6

Its just another trick by labour to gerrymander the unemployment figures.

I taught engineering students at college before my retirement and they were dedicated in their studies.

Occasionally due to the absence of a colleague I had to cover for general classes of 17+ year olds  who came along because there was either no secondary school for them after the age of 16 locally or that school was glad to see the back of them. About one half of these students were totally useless to society and would have been better off doing some hard manual work to dissipate their stupid energies.