Re-examining Compulsory Education

By the closing of World War 1, the United States had begun its first bold stroke in standardizing its society- it made public education compulsory, at the minimum through elementary grades. I imagine those at the time ran the spectrum with regard to their motivation for seeing such a law put in place. 

On the one hand, is it not the first radical act of equality, a rising tide lifting all boats as it were, to ensure that every youth in this budding industrialized nation be educated? Do we not, to this day, still frame education as the great equalizer? OF COURSE, youth should be required to go to school. It is a social privilege and right to better oneself.

On the other hand, who truly will benefit from this bettering? What intention and purpose did school serve, particularly once it had been standardized across a vast and variable nation? OF COURSE, youth should be required to go to school. How else will we get these future adults to fall into place in this system?

It’s been 105 years since the conclusion of World War 1 and the mandate of compulsory education. As is expected in such a lengthy period, things have evolved. Compulsory education, for example, is now required through your senior year of high school or- depending on the state- at least through your 16th year of life in which you are deemed old enough to withdraw. That’s an entire childhood, a large chunk of adolescence, surrendered to one of the largest, most influential, and ineffective institutions in our modern society. 

That is hours of unstructured play, now imprisoned within the absurd policies and procedures of line-walking and learning targets.

That is days of daydreaming, squashed under educational buzz words like rigor and success criteria.

That is imperative moments of spontaneous friendship making on neighborhood streets, substituted for contrived social emotional curriculum. 

The list goes on. And we submit- ourselves and our neighbors and our children and grandchildren to this behemoth of a system that churns away and eats up every valuable experience and circumstance that is authentically embedded in real life. Because apparently you don’t learn there- you learn in a classroom. Behind concrete walls of a school. On a campus that is tucked away from the rest of the world, only to be told by teachers in front of the classroom that you need to be prepared for said world. 

So I wonder, what is the point of compulsory education and who does it ultimately serve?

And I wonder- what would happen if we turned compulsory… to choice?