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The creator stated directly in the thread that they have seen enough to resolve Yes and just left it open to see more comments. Unless they had a retraction, it should resolve Yes.

Happy to unresolve if anyone provides evidence this wasn't the latest take from the creator.

Compulsory education serves as a crucial foundation for societal progress and individual development. It ensures that every child has access to essential knowledge and skills. While challenges may arise, the availability of resources like https://writinguniverse.com/free-essay-examples/courage/ can support students in their academic journey. Overall, compulsory education remains a vital step towards a more educated and equitable society. #ChangeMyMind

@Boklam Please resolve.

@Boklam Please resolve.

Please resolve.

Homeschooling is possible in USA and it help some smart people, but isolates others in extreme Christian communities. Most people would continue going to school anyway, only few has capacity or money for this. I expect most of those people to teach well, and support NO.

I believe that if both the child and parrents agree to homeschooling, it should be allowed. Such children should be offered regular counseling and an option to leave the home in case the child wants to, seems sane and there is a strong suspicion of suffering. Some well implemented variation on good incentives should improve upon compulsory schooling.

Well implemented compulsory schooling would be even better, but far costlier and harder to implement. Making homeschooling safe is cheap and the only magic required is support of public for specific high quality implementation.

How does this change your belief that careful homeschooling is good? E.g. from 60% to 62%. If this does not answer your question, please explain.

Is there a specific belief your conviction rests upon? Do you lack belief in benefits of homeschooling? Is there something scary about homeschooling that you think would affect enough people to negate the benefits?

A lot of people are really dumb through no fault of their own. Usually it's because their parents or local community are also dumb. Compulsory education gives every child a chance to learn a basic amount of reading, writing, and arithmetic, which are functional skills that help basically everyone in their adult lives. I prefer to live in a society where I can generally assume most people I come into contact with can read, write, and do basic math. I think you do to, it is generalizably more pleasant than the alternative and is good for economic growth.

this argument is a whole lot less convincing because I used "to" rather than "too" but that was just a mistake, I learned the difference during my compulsory education.

@ForrestTaylor OK fair. This sounds like the conventional argument for universal education: as an equality-of-opportunity thing, you want to make sure everyone is taught reading, writing, and arithmetic -- and as far as it goes, I find it pretty convincing.

I don't think this is an adequate argument to justify ~10 years of full-time compulsory schooling, though. Schools do much more than the minimum to make sure everybody has "functional skills that help basically everyone in their adult lives". English and math combined occupy only a fraction of the average schoolchild's day -- they might be 2 of 7 classes. Even in English and math, school demands a lot more than "functional skills": algebra, geometry, trig and Shakespeare are wonderful aspects of our shared culture but I would not call them "functional skills".

For example: imagine allowing students to test out of compulsory schooling, once they demonstrated a basic knowledge of reading, writing and arithmetic... Why is this a bad policy?

@Boklam Thank you, I appreciate that.

I agree with you that it might be good to allow students to test out of compulsory schooling. I, in fact, did this- I tested well in my college exams, and dropped out of high school to enter college early. And then I failed at college at 16-18 and dropped out to join the military. So it goes. Turns out ability to take tests isn't everything.

Anyway. A policy of "compulsory schooling unless you can test out" is still a policy of compulsory education. My understanding of your question was that it was asking if no compulsory education whatsoever would be better. I think that it would not be, because more people would grow up illiterate and dumb as rocks.

A lot of people are really dumb through no fault of their own. Usually it's because their parents or local community are also dumb

The main reason, in rich countries for most of the population, is genetics - intelligence is very heritable (this isn't related to the race bit - race/iq is very contested, iq heritability among individuals is very demonstrated). (although this is in the situation where most go to school, this doesn't mean removing school wouldn't be bad)

@jacksonpolack I was speaking broadly- when I said "dumb", I was including things like illiteracy, which is heavily mediated by compulsory schooling. Pre-compulsory schooling, a whole lot of people couldn't read because their parents also could not read. I.E. white illiteracy declined from about 11.5% in the mid-1800s to about 0.5% in 1980, and black illiteracy from about 80% to 1.5% over the same period. I don't think this shift can be fully explained by things like the Flynn effect, I think compulsory education had a lot to do with it.

agree compulsory schooling helped with literacy. but any impact compulsory schooling has on iq is included in the 'flynn effect''s definition

Is this true? I though most countries allowed for home schooling. America certainly does.

@Duncan Homeschooling when not using a school is compulsory though, I think that the intention is to include homeschooling and the wording is a bit faulty.

@Duncan Some jurisdictions do; others don't. (I think it's effectively banned in Germany, for example.) Even where it is allowed, regulations can be strict enough to make it de facto impossible, or lax enough to make it easy. (For example, one US state allows homeschooling either through an accredited organization or independently; it's said to be prohibitively difficult to do it independently because of regulatory barriers, and there are only a small number of accredited organizations, all with a particular ideological bent...)

In any case, I think I mean to ask a more abstract question: not about the particulars of any jurisdiction's current policy, but where the right balance is between "compulsory schooling, no home-schooling or other exceptions" and "let kids do whatever they [their parents] want"...

@lukalot I knew a lot of unschooled kids when I was growing up; homeschooling doesn't necesarily involve anything in the way of formal schooling. If the question is "should it be required that at least one adult is present who will talk to your kid", that seems like an easy YES.

@Duncan I was also "homeschooled" if you apply the term schooling very loosely, unfortunately. In most US states there are tests / requirements for homeschoolers which try to ensure they are being educated, with consequences for failing including forced enrollment in public schools, or from what I can tell, in some cases being reported to CPS. I would interpret that as compulsory. Does not apply to all states though.

Anyway, I do interpret this as an easy YES.

@lukalot @Duncan This is interesting. I'd be curious to hear more about your experience, if you'd like to share. Do you think you'd have been better off in the public schools?

Yes, you've already given me strong reason to resolve YES. On the other hand I'm in no rush to resolve, and I'd like to wait and see if I get more interesting comments!

@Boklam If you're interested, I wrote probably too much.

I was pulled out of public school as a young child to be homeschooled, my parents were religious and didn't want me to associate with worldly children and were also concerned by school shootings. For the first two years my parents would coach me directly, but gave up around grade 5 and onward. I think by middle school this was because they no longer had total understanding of the subject matter; they were older parents so they had been out of school for some time. There were school programs like Florida Virtual School which I was given to learn from after that, but I found the content very low quality and was awfully bored by it. With nothing forcing me to give the school programs my attention as I assume that there might have been in a public school context, I didn't read most of the literature. I could blame myself for this, but I was a child and didn't really have the motivation or value system to hold myself accountable. One of the highlights of my education was reading religious literature (it's worth mentioning that I am an atheist as an adult) and fantasy literature every day for most of my childhood, which I think gave me the reading and writing skills I needed to educate myself decently in fields that I was personally interested in. I don't think that without my reading comprehension I would be anywhere that I am now, and I think it's lucky that I had that at all. I can imagine that some unschooled children aren't given that opportunity.

Ironically, I was pulled out in response to having passed a gifted and talented identification test performed on my school. I passed for my writing and mathematics which were good at the time. The teachers recommended I switch schools to a gifted school, which triggered my parents' reconsideration of my schooling. They visited the gifted school but said that the children were given too much free reign to do what they wanted during classes and that they didn't think I would be able to learn in that environment because I was too distractible.

As far as whether or not I would have been better off in public school, socially I think so. I didn't have very much contact with other kids and didn't have any friends really until I started reaching out on the internet in my teenage years. However, I think it's important to mention that my current knowledge might be closer to my natural inclination because I was given the freedom to explore the internet and (maybe instinctually) taught myself the things that I still care about to this day: software design / development, illustration, maths. I do have looser knowledge of some subjects which other people would expect to be basic education, though. I learned that New Mexico was a state last year.

I do feel somewhat disappointed by my education. I think that education should be regulated, but I don't feel strongly that all education should be public schooling. I think that where there is private/homeschooling, parents should be held accountable for the outcomes (at least more accountable than my family was under Florida law).

@lukalot Thanks for sharing!

>> the children were given too much free reign to do what they wanted during classes

The irony...

>> One of the highlights of my education was reading religious literature (it's worth mentioning that I am an atheist as an adult) and fantasy literature every day for most of my childhood

This part sounds like an idyllic childhood, tbh.

>> my current knowledge might be closer to my natural inclination

Do you feel you learned math better than you would have in school? (I'd ask the same question about software and illustration, but probably you wouldn't have learned anything about those in school.)

>> New Mexico

My experience is that the average public school student has a very shaky knowledge of geography -- maybe not quite as shaky as yours, though...

>> socially I think so

I have to admit I was not terribly happy with my social experience in school. For some reason (probably my own poor social skills) I didn't really have friends in elementary school, and I didn't have close friends in middle school either. I'm generally pretty optimistic but I don't have much positive stuff to say about my social life back then.

thanks for your interest @Boklam!

I agree the reading was great, I'm very glad that I was encouraged to do that and had parents that read to me from a young age.

I don't think that I learned maths better than I would have in school, but I did learn the enticing parts easily and in depth because I ended up connected into recreational maths communities as my main internet corner. I lack practical maths skills which I didn't find as interesting, for example I think there are some fairly basic algebra and calculus skills that I would still stumble on.
I had a junk food maths diet, and loved snacking, but being forced to eat your vegetables is the role of a teacher.

Interesting about your social experience in school. If school wasn't a positive social experience what did you find to be your social outlet? On market topic, was it something that children who aren't subject to compulsory schooling have access to normally?

@Boklam I had a very different home school experience -- I was home schooled by secular parents, never attended 'real' school, and over time we drifted more and more toward unschooling; I always had textbooks, but no one really cared if I made much progress in them, and by the time I was "middle school" I pretty much chose my own reading. I remember doing the CAT (in the home) a few years, but I never heard anything about my scores. We had a pretty big local home school group, with a wide mix of religious/hippy/whatever home schoolers, so I probably had more (at least, wider-ranging) socialization than you'd get in the schools. I'm pretty sure I would have hated public school, but thankfully I'll never know. Regardless, college was a big change, and I had to learn to to write, which was hard. I'm glad I didn't try to learn all that mess when I was little, but it made the first year frustrating. But apparently, no one learns anything else but writing in the public schools, so most of my first year classes were low level review, and I had plenty of time to figure out what they wanted me to put on paper.

There are two big caveats to taking any meaning from most American home schooling stories, though; most home schoolers have at least one stay-at-home adult, which is not something that everyone has access to; so compulsory schooling gets conflated with the need for childcare; some form of childcare does need to be mandatory; you can't just lock the baby in a closet all day. However, a parent in the home solves that problem neatly -- and will also, often, solve the schooling problem.

Also, America, England, Australia, and etc. speak English, which has one of the hardest-to-learn of all written languages. There are other places with bad orthographies, but a Finnish home schooler has a much lighter load than an English one. If you believe that literacy for all able children is important, then mandatory schooling will have much more value in America than in Serbia.

@lukalot What is a "social outlet"? I knew no such thing.

Ummm I think I'm also happier to be alone than some other people, maybe that's why I find the concept confusing :)

@Duncan

>> more (at least, wider-ranging) socialization than you'd get in the schools

Interesting, and not at all what I expected to hear.

>> no one learns anything else but writing in the public schools

This made me laugh.

>> bad orthographies

Hmmm, I wonder how big this effect is.

OK, in the case of Chinese I think I agree: I think their mess of a writing system is part of why Chinese elementary school kids do so much homework. (Then again, the difference between Chinese and English dwarfs the difference between English and Finnish or whatever. And despite all the homework and testing, I have seen even highly-educated Chinese people forget how to write common everyday words...)

In English, I think spelling is only a part of the burden of learning to read. There's also building vocabulary, getting practice to be able to read fluently and quickly, learning to understand different registers of English (formal academic English, 18th or 19th century writing, etc.). Actually maybe I'll make a market about this...

@Boklam I think that for many people when they don't feel like they have sufficient social connection they search for "an outlet", or another place to find those connections. For me it was online web chats and programming communities. Could totally be that you didn't feel the need though ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@Boklam There's been a fair amount of research into how much difference orthographic depth makes in schooling; English puts students about two years behind other countries... with a LOT of caveats.

For example, English is bad, but French is almost as bad, and Portuguese isn't great, and etc. So current English spelling puts kids about two years behind a theoretically perfect English... or Finnish, which is pretty close to perfect, as far as spelling rules go.

Also, when adding schooling we tend to front-load it; we added kindergarten to give kids a head start before first grade, and then we added preschool to give kids a head start on kindergarten... but starting earlier doesn't do as much good as lasting longer; written language is not like spoken language, and early exposure isn't especially useful. The older you get, the better you are at learning to read (well, up to a point; but all else being equal, you can learn to read faster at 20 than at 4). So saying that we start earlier and learn slower is true, but misleading. We learn slower, and, mostly unrelatedly, we start earlier.