I think the evidence is quite clear – the proportion of young people who are not in education, training or employment is rising. We’re not sure why but the funds dedicated to training and education has risen and unemployment for those who want to work has fallen. The proportion of young people on inactive benefits (income support and incapacity benefit) is rising. Young people are also less happy on average than before. That is a pretty serious timebomb. It’s worth reading Layard’s book even if you disagree with him. What it all adds up to is a public policy failure which should be an area where truely radical policies are looked at.

I agree, at least we should be moving in that direction and making a work/school combination a viable option.

Kulvinder – I used to think that was the cure to all ills. Unfortunatly the evidence is that more (young) people just don’t want to learn, train or work

Every generation seems to like saying this – despite overwhelming evidence of continual human progress being evidence to the contrary. Its a bit like lunatic racial/class purists getting overly upset at ‘the wrong kinds of people’ breeding too much; because quite clearly people 100 years ago were cleverer.

From my own experience years ago i remember a fair amount of enthusiasm when work experience was arranged – there was also quite a bit of jealousy when some kids were paid for their work. The government is apparently considering paying kids to stay in school so i don’t think my idea is completely off the wall.

To put it another way lets say the minimum age at which you could leave full time education was raised to 26, all the problems we now associate with those 16 and under would suddenly appear in those 26 and under. The same delinquency would in my opinion become apparent.

Full time secondary education is really little more than a hangover from victorian times – they didn’t have vast information networks available to them and needed a fairly rigid structure to inform the public to a desired level. We live in an age of mass telecommunication where David Attenborough can tell me about the natural world far more effectively than any classroom. Thats before we even consider the internet.

We’re willing to recognise that monetary incentive is a factor in life, so we’re willing to pay kids to stay-on in an environment which they don’t appreciate and which somewhat hinders their social aptitude. Yet we’re not willing to take a leap of imagination and see the multiple benefits of dividing their time between formal schooling and a professional atmosphere largely free of other kids. I think a market solution would be best for all concerned.

of course, the dodgy thing is the ‘patriotic’ bit and the military training bit.

Generally people are on average making themselves more unhappy through their own choices, and the impact of those choices on others. I’m torn whether the Government has a right to intervene in agressive ways to stop making people making bad choices (a camp some liberal economists, radical Greens and right wing politicans could each fight a corner for in different ways), or whether the Government’s role is to treat the symptoms of peoples’ choices (the Layard approach). If it intervenes it will invetably constrain the choices of many, and lead to decreases in happiness of some, but it could raise overall happiness and cure some of the so-called “societal decline” by hugely incentivising renengagement with positive networks. If it attempts to treat it could enable people to make better choices or it could further infantise the population. And both approaches would have inevitable unintended consequenses. What we do know is in the area of policy on young people at the moment we know progressive policies are having limited impact and pretty much every indicator is going in the wrong direction. Inevitably we will just blunder on somewhere in the middel overseeing more and more failiures of public policy.

This is more like “Bill, the Galactic Hero”.

Wouldn’t it be more useful to be radically progressive instead of reheated-reactionary? Theres obviously a problem with people leaving school at 16 without any qualifications of social aptitude for working in a professional environmen.

Personally id allow children who obviously don’t have a desire to follow an academic path into industry the option of working one or two days a week in an office or in insudstry – id allow them to do that from the moment they start secondary education. Some people just prefer learning ‘on the job’ and i don’t think theres anything wrong with that, infact afaik a combined education/work system is seen as very helpful to those who leave school but don’t want to go to university; so why not allow someone the opportunity to do that from an early age?

I’d much prefer a society in which education and work were integrated (for those who choose it) at much earlier age. Having all your ‘education’ in one big block till the age of 16 then only working is absurd imho.

Were you at my 18th birthday?

TFI

Of course if I were under 16 I’d think that this is a terrible idea, although if it involved less community service and more LSD I’d sign up in a heart beat.

TFI

I think as a Brit we should be aware of the positives and the negatives of the Empire rather then be either tub thumbing or constantly apologising.

I mean, take slavery, with the Royal Navy’s long long reach and, lets be honest, wilingness to shoot first, the slave trade would have been much harder to curtail.

On t’other hand, we screwed up across Africa and let the worst angels of our nature take over (Rhodes et al – tossers).

Or India – we gave it unity, prevented a mughal comeback,good government and civil law…..sorry about the resource extraction, not killing off the caste system and the famines.

In fact, this idea is ridiculous in so many ways it could be used as a new linguistic paradigm for ‘ridiculous gimmick’.

I really can’t name any other outside of the pages of Star Trek. lol

Think about it – If a tree falls in a forest with no one to hear it, then does it make a sound?

Hollywood scriptwriters have no imagination – they need to get their inspiration from real life or perhaps they are all part of a plot – as fictional wars have no resonance. Fictional stories set in real wars – now that IS powerful propaganda and can effect how a nation behaves.

Justforfun

POssibly its all been a plot by Waterstones to boost non fiction sales in years to come??? You heard it here first! The MilitaryPublishingComplex!

The thing is….somebody, somewhere would believe that!