School is a combination of daycare and training.

We make it mandatory because otherwise the kids of the disadvantaged, the uneducated or the just-plain-disorganised wouldn't get a decent start in life. It also allows more people to work - someone else is looking after the kids.

There's some argument to be had about what age it should be mandatory until, sure, but mandatory schooling is most definitely a good thing for society.

Mandatory schooling is more about keeping people OUT of the job market than it is putting people INTO it. If schools were about training, they'd look more like universities (and if universities were about advanced training, they'd look more like business environments).

How many kids study to pass the test? How many teachers teach to get the kids to pass the test? And thereafter they forget everything. I see grown-ass adults who can't calculate a simple 20% tip on paper, and more who can't do it in their heads, and that's an EASY one. People, working in industry, who don't know that the US has 50 states. I've seen programmers with computer science degrees counting on their fingers to add numbers.

Again, you can't teach something to someone who doesn't want to learn, and you can't prevent someone from learning who does want to. Schools get the credit for education, but they're just present. The mandatory aspect did nothing.

"you can't teach something to someone who doesn't want to learn"

Pretty sure you can, when they're kids. Repeated exposure at the very least.

I'm not going to address the rest of your comment, I disagree utterly with pretty much everything you've said there.

> We make it mandatory because otherwise the kids of the disadvantaged, the uneducated or the just-plain-disorganised wouldn't get a decent start in life.

For most of the "disadvantaged, the uneducated or the just-plain-disorganised", as you put it, mandatory school attendance does nothing to solve their problems anyway, as the people you are thinking of have many systemic things running against them in addition any personal issues in their lives.

> There's some argument to be had about what age it should be mandatory until, sure, but mandatory schooling is most definitely a good thing for society.

Mandatory school isn't the same thing as doing something positive for communities. Some communities will find the policy beneficial, others will find it destructive (esp. when some kids are forced into school systems are that literal prisons, complete with metal detectors, cell phone lockers you pay out of pocket for, and frequent searches of all student belongings).

"mandatory school attendance does nothing to solve their problems anyway"

I disagree that it does nothing. Some people still get the opportunity to better themselves through education, even if it doesn't help everyone.

Schools becoming prisons is a weird US phenomenon, I think you have societal issues to tackle that are much bigger than schooling.

And it's still better to have kids given access to education under those circumstances than not at all (and without it being mandatory they would not have access. No, they wouldn't)

so "we" have to provide mandatory schooling and a value judgement on what constitutes the "correct" schooling, but "you" have to deal with societal issues.

"we" in most western countries do tend to provide schooling to our children and make it mandatory

"you" in America seem to have some extra problems in this area, which I still don't think overshadows the benefits

Yes, problem?

> mandatory schooling is most definitely a good thing for society.

[citation needed]

...and on the other hand putting smart kids _willing_ to learn in an uninspiring and oppressive environment. (Bad for their learning and devastating for their still developing personality.)

IMHO it's hard to find a worse crime against natural curiosity and willingness than _forcing_ people to do something.

It's a good thing for Children who want to learn, but who's parents want to send them to the mines instead.

Smart kids willing to learn - how do they know? How do we pick out these smart kids and make sure they get education? Even if they're not from good backgrounds? How do we get these smart kids out of their crappy homes and make sure somebody teaches them something, anything, unless it's mandatory?

YOU may have been perfect, motivated, willing to learn, and may have been given the opportunity to learn even if it wasn't mandatory. Many others would not, many parents wouldn't bother.

It was very noticeable to me, by second grade, who was there to learn and who was just there because they were forced to wake up and walk to a bus stop in the morning. While I was lucky enough to be put into some specialty classes based on previous testing I'd done, the majority of my day was still spent sitting next to kids who were literally drying glue in their desks, pouring ink into it to color it and eating it once it dried.

There's nothing fundamentally wrong with those kids, they just need a different direction and a little more support.

Can't disagree with that. But at that age some of the 'forced to wake up and walk to the bus-stop' kids still have a long way to grow and change.

I don't know the system in the US very well. Kids can go to different sorts of colleges post-16 here in the UK, or could (until recently, this may have changed) opt out at that age and enter the workforce.

Just providing a good environment for learning (teachers explaining things, eager to answer question).

For ones wanting to learn, just don't force them to do so. OK, is someone is not much willing to learn - well, then it may be good to force to do so. But don't force everyone because some need it.

(It seems that forcing people to learn is very inefficient. And I think for that reason many times school are places to socialize, bully and drink doing not much work that it is necessary to survive... and not much places actually good for learning anything.)

Without 'forcing' kids to school, how do we find the ones that supposedly need it?

And how do we get kids who could use it, but from backgrounds that wouldn't bother to educate them at all, into the system?

Mandatory education is a good thing.

Forcing all kids to go to school and forcing all kids to learn are two different things.

As you know, daycare (and, say, crime and accident prevention), training, and cultural/national upbringing are different things, and they work differently, often with contradicting goals and methodologies. Currently we tend to treat "education" as a one thing, but in isn't.

I am all for all kids going to school (unless one can provide a better education), otherwise there would be a disaster of crime and poverty, much alike the one during the industrial revolution. However, what happens inside is extremely far from things which "make sense" both for them, and the society.

I'm not saying there's not vast room for improvement here!

I just don't think that abolishing mandatory education/training/socialisation/what-the-hell-ever is a good idea, and it seems you don't either :)