The necessity for compulsion

Most societies decide that education is a "good thing" for their children. While one can argue that the identification of education with schooling is narrow and restrictive, there can surely be little doubt as to the benefits of education. After all, in its widest (and most accurate) sense, education consists of learning from experience, practical and theoretical. As has been pointed out above, the schooling system in New Zealand at the moment is heavily biased toward the intellectual and academic (a bias which is compulsory for students to accept if they wish to "succeed"). Introducing some sort of, albeit minor, rectification to this imbalance between intellectual and manual labour must also, unfortunately, be compulsory. The inculcation of pro-intellectual schema in this society is such that any alternative proposal is liable to have a long road in front of it. Examples are easy to find — so many senior school pupils tell a teacher that they don't intend going to university, and get the reply that they are wasting their talents. No question of what they wanted to do, no possibility of alternatives being acceptable — if you don't go to university you're wasting your talents. Hopefully, by injecting a years break to the scheme, alternatives may be raised for most students, and some criticism of taught values and ideas can take place. Despite its professed belief in the rights of the individual, our society steps in in many places to protect individuals from themselves. Safety belts in cars, or regulations against hard drugs are two examples — given the benefits envisaged from this scheme, there is no real ground for opposing its compulsory nature.