ChristopherWhite.info/blog

Mike Ion:

I struggle to understand why anyone on the Left of British politics could oppose Gordon Brown’s moves, mentioned in the Queen’s speech yesterday, to raise the education leaving age to 18.

How about: ‘Because the Left includes those who think that people should be able to do largely what they like as well as those who think that people should do as they’re told, in precisely the same way that the western half of a map includes the southwest as well as the northwest.’

One might hope that someone selected by the Labour Party to contest a parliamentary seat might have twigged that little fact, and also that a site calling itself Liberal Conspiracy might tend towards the former rather than the latter, but apparently not.

Chris Dillow suggests a sensible-sounding alternative: raising the Education Maintenance Allowance, relieving financial pressure on those who drop out of school because they need the money and achieving much the same result without compulsion. More carrot, less stick: good. (It may seem like doing this would cost more, but since the actual proposal includes “training” as well as academic education, and the government are apparently going to conjure up 90,000 new apprenticeships, possibly not.)

Now, it’s perhaps not as illiberal as it first appears, given that 16-year-olds who want to go and work will apparently be able to do so four days a week and spend one day training/studying. Though I turn 25 next month, in many ways I think of myself as a permanent 17, and so I can say with some degree of confidence that if I was 16 years old and being faced with a £200 fine for doing what I actually want to do rather than what Gordon Brown says I should do, I’d be more than a wee bit annoyed.

But really, it highlights what a no-man’s land 16- and 17-years-olds are in, as neither adults nor children.

In England, 16-year-olds can reproduce, but they can’t get married. They can fuck, but they can’t have a cigarette afterwards. They can fuck, but they’re forbidden Dutch Courage³ when talking to the opposite sex⁴. They can fuck, but they can’t buy pornography. They can fuck, but they can’t get paid for it.

They can live alone, but not get a mortgage. They can work, and therefore pay taxes, but not vote and have a say in how those taxes are spent — the ostensible purpose for one notorious revolution. They can ride a moped, and at 17 drive a car, but can’t hire one. If arrested, they don’t need an “appropriate adult” present, but won’t be sentenced as adults if found guilty of a crime.

They are both adults and not adults at the same time. If I were the children’s minister I would probably suggest to the boss that perhaps this mess should be sorted out before deciding whether they be forced into continuing education against their wishes.⁵

And once this has passed, how much easier will it be for Vacuous Dave⁶ to create his Cameron Youth?
_ _ _

1 Ant and Dec rapped that, before they were Ant and Dec. The full verse is: No jokes, no messin’/We’ll teach you a lesson/A state of confusion to keep you all guessin’. Buggered if I know what it means. But they didn’t need extra training beyond 16.
2 I’ve just finished a postgrad diploma that cost me five grand, but education ain’t for everyone.
3 Why “Dutch”?
4 I have an entirely facetious pet theory that arranged marriages are so common in the Islamic world because, without booze, nobody can ever pull
5 Crap, obviously. Ministers almost by definition are toadying lackeys virtually devoid of initiative.
6 Henceforth to be known as VD.

2 Comments »

Link to RSS Feed for comments on this post