Get Those Kids Off the Street

We are very fortunate in Australia to be governed by more politicians per voter than any other country on earth.

We are doubly fortunate in that all of our politicians are very intelligent and well educated. They are capable of insights and problem solving that most of us lower forms of old-fashioned emergers from the slimy pond of life could never even aspire to. Many of their decisions seem to be nothing short of sheer genius.

The latest contagious political thinking in the Land of Oz, is that the school leaving age should be elevated from fifteen years to seventeen years. The leaving age was, in New South Wales, set at fifteen years by the Public Education Act of 1880. The fifteen year mark seems to have worked reasonably well ever since. Of course, those young people who had the necessary ability, and who also had parents with the monetary wherewithal, could remain at school for another two or thee years in preparation for higher studies. Many students were quite content to leave school at fifteen years of age or shortly thereafter, to pursue careers in fields that ranged from requiring no further formal training right through to requiring higher technical or university training. Most of this further education was gained whilst the young people held down full-time jobs.

There were inequities in the old system. Some of the very brightest of students were not able to continue at school, let alone attend university or the like, because they were urgently required to assist in the support of their families, or because there simply were not sufficient family funds to support them through further studies without their earning of supplemental income. At the other end of the spectrum were the students from wealthy families, who either did not want to pursue further studies or who really did not have the requisite intellectual capacity to handle or benefit from further studies, but were kept at the educational grindstone for motives of family pride or family notions of social superiority.

The goals of the Public Education Act have worked quite well, overall. The school attendance years between the sixth and fifteenth birthdays represented a good compromise. They kept most children out of full-time labour and channeled them through the most difficult portions of pubescence.

The overwhelming majority of them entered the full-time workforce as literate, numerate and socially engaged individuals who were keen to become productive members of society.

When push comes to shove, there is really no need to have Year 10 to Year 12 classes at our secondary schools. Let our young people leave these super-parental institutions at approximately fifteen years of age, having completed a good basic educational curriculum, and receiving a testamur acknowledging their accomplishment. Put them out of the super-parental door, but make other free educational doors open to them. Let those who seek to pursue additional academic nourishment attend non-parental senior colleges for Year 10, Year 11 and Year 12, or, if they prefer, let them attend technical training institutions. As well, offer free university places to all Year 12 leavers, all technical training graduates, and all mature-age people. Allow people a considerable freedom to choose the path of productivity that most appeals to them. In this way, we can come to respect all contributors to our society regardless of the path that they have chosen. That way, we will have some hope of truly becoming the “clever nation” that our politicians have been urging.

Unfortunately, the current push by our politicians to introduce compulsory school attendance until the age of seventeen years, is not motivated by any carefully considered strategy to advance our “clever nationhood,” nor is the actual capacity of most of our politicians insightful or intelligent. Rather, their capacity is that which we have sadly come to expect of politicians; it is subterfuge, obfuscation and expediency.

The raising of the school leaving age to seventeen years is not designed to increase the cleverness of this country, and, indeed, it will not increase the cleverness of this country. What it is designed to do, and what it will no doubt achieve, is the protection of official unemployment statistics by the stroke-of-a-pen discounting of many of our sixteen and seventeen year old people.

Battler