Comment by barry-cotter | Hacker News Reader

Comment by barry-cotter | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Education reform is important too. Obama is pushing reform to get states to increase the age of required education to 18 [2].

Imagine if you had spent 6 hours a day 5 days a week for 12 years being forced to play sports. If the idea provokes violent horror in you you now have some idea how the people you would be forcing to stay in school would feel about it. And make no mistake; compulsory attendance at allegedly educational institutions is forced. Whether the superior outcomes for those thus compelled outweighs the poorer outcomes and massively less pleasant experience of those forced to share classrooms and teacher attention with sullen youth there under pain of imprisonment is aquestion to be dealt with in ones own head.

Actually, I think that's a great example--on the one hand, I would probably find that annoying and unpleasant. On the other hand, had I done more sports earlier in my life, I would be better off now. (I am currently not nearly as fit as I should be.)

That said, I don't think raising the required education age is the right move either. In a perfect world, we would concentrate on improving the quality of education instead, both imparting more knowledge in the time people are at school and getting them to like school more. However, I do not have the slightest clue of how to accomplish this.

Given that law enforcement officers are permitted to initiate physical force in mandating attendance, perhaps they could also involuntarily medicate students with mood altering stimulants to accomplish this? It might make them better off later. However since we have extinguished all opportunities available to the individual unseen from our limited perspective, by forcing choice of the benefit that was seen, it is not epistemologically possible for us to know. We must instead confine ourselves to a discussion of the means and processes by which these ends are realized. This includes discussion of whether individuals have the right to initiate force against others to achieve ends, and whether they are able to delegate rights they do not have to agencies of enforcement via nonmagical means.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com