Posted by Nicholas at August 6, 2006 09:08 AM[C]ompulsory education [is] a bad idea which is (by and large) badly implemented by the state in the form of day-prisons which act as a factory for producing unacceptably large numbers of witless, traumatised, ignorant, semi-literate teenagers and not an insignificant number of violent, anti-social thugs.
Nor is this a secret shame. Indeed, it is the subject of much national hand-wringing about 'what to do'. And yet, if I dare to suggest that the whole idea of incarcerating children for at least 10 years and then indoctrinating them with the things that politicians think they should know about is both counterproductive and immoral and bound to produce very little except awful outcomes, the reaction I get is rather similar to the one I imagine I would get if I were to demand that all pregnant women be injected with rabies.
Thaddeus Tremayne, "Schools out (and not just for summer)", Samizdata, 2006-08-02
Visitors since 17 August, 2004