Hacker News Reader

> You mean they enroll back at a private school to get their education?

I mean the money that government wastes keeping them in school while they are 15 and don't want to learn, can be given to them later when/if they decide to learn.

> most likely the path is that they just stay at home doing nothing all day if their parents let them.

That's up to the parent to decide: leave them at home, convince them to find a job, go to special school or a class for misbehaving children, go to trade school etc.

Those who turn to vagrancy/crime do it anyway, as they have enough time outside of school too.

> child has to be in education until they turn 18.

> employing 15 year olds is [not] legal

These are not physical laws given to us from above, these are rather misguided attempts by politicians to look good, and are harmful to the society.

Imagine that instead of prisons we were forcing criminals to go spend time sitting in offices and disrupting normal work. What we do with children now is equally effective.

>>I mean the money that government wastes keeping them in school while they are 15 and don't want to learn, can be given to them later when/if they decide to learn.

So you want to financially incentivize kids to drop out of school? "Drop out now, we'll give you a bunch of money later".

>> these are rather misguided attempts by politicians to look good, and are harmful to the society.

Saying that keeping 15 year olds out of a job is harmful to the society is....certainly a take, for sure.

>>What we do with children now is equally effective.

Well, thank you for editing this sentence from what you wrote originally, but just to be clear - I'm not advocating that misbehaving kids should be forced to sit in normal classrooms and disrupt everyone else - rather that schools should be given the resources to deal with it - the school I went to had special classes for unruly kids which were much smaller and where you basically had to meet up with specialists every week and your grades were severely impacted. It does work in most cases. Sure there will be ones that are truly beyond any kind of help - but that is very very rare. Most of the time you just have kids who could get on the straight path if someone helped them, but public schools are usually so underfunded they can't help even if they want to.

> Drop out now, we'll give you a bunch of money later

Later they only get ability to sit at the same classes at the same public school, so there is no financial incentive.

15 year olds forced to sit in classes they don't want are way more miserable than those allowed to work and feel like adults. In any case people should be allowed to make choices by themselves not be forced by the government.

> the school I went to had special classes for unruly kids

That's a great solution too, and must be available option for parents. Sadly very few schools do that, making both unruly kids and good kids miserable as a result.

> schools should be given the resources

I don't think the problem is the lack of resources, specialist for helping unruly kids is not going to cost more than a math teacher. The problem is that most schools are simply opposed to the idea of splitting students based on their ability and willingness to study. As a result they have a system that harms everyone involved.

>>Later they only get ability to sit at the same classes at the same public schoo

I have to ask, what public school would accept adults taking classes along the rest of 15 year olds?

>> In any case people should be allowed to make choices by themselves not be forced by the government.

I'm sorry, but kids/teenagers are generally not allowed to make these choices, for good reasons. If you're an adult, then sure, do whatever. But kids should be in school, whether they like it or not - it's really not their choice to make. We can argue that maybe 15-16 year olds are at the cusp of being able to do this - but I'd say the cut off should stay at 18. You're under 18, you go to school. There's no other option. The question is how does the state manage this.

>>The problem is that most schools are simply opposed to the idea of splitting students based on their ability and willingness to study.

And I agree that it's an awful thing(that the schools are unwilling to do this)

I went to school at 6 years, our schools were for 10 years, and at 16 i went to university. At the university with us were some 20 year olds, who went to school at 7 years, were not able to get to university in their 17, were drafted to army at 18 and came back. 20 year old being around 16-17 year olds did not cause any catastrophe.

20 year old who wants to study is not going to cause any problem for the public school either, it will even be beneficial for the class as children will see that studying is useful.

> teenagers are generally not allowed to make these choices, for good reasons

When they are not allowed to make choices, the parents are supposed to make choices for them, not corrupt politicians and bureaucrats.

>> the parents are supposed to make choices for them

Parents don't have any choice in this either. A child under 18 should be in full time education - there is nothing to choose, maybe except for the school they can be in.

>>20 year old being around 16-17 year olds did not cause any catastrophe.

I like that you shifted "adults with 15 year olds" to 20 year olds with 16-17 year olds.

> Parents don't have any choice in this either.

That's a very fucked up thing to say, governments or random strangers from internet do not have a right to decide how parent raises his child. Do you even have a child?

> I like that you shifted "adults with 15 year olds" to 20 year olds with 16-17 year olds

It was just my own experience, if you want another example in early years of Soviet Union there were 40 year olds learning to read with 6 year olds.

And in general i don't see why any combination of ages should be a problem?

>>Do you even have a child

I do. And like I said, you as a parent have a choice about the kind of school you send your child into. You don't have a choice whether they are in education or not.

>>And in general i don't see why any combination of ages should be a problem?

When you were at school were there many adult students in your classes?

>>you want another example in early years of Soviet Union there were 40 year olds learning to read with 6 year olds.

Yes, 100 years ago in the early days of the soviet union the classes were offered to everyone to increase literacy rates. I can assure you that throughout the rest of history of the soviet union you didn't have adults attending primary/secondary school, gymnasiums or other types of schools for children. Soviet union had schools for adults from very early on.

Show me a single law that was not given by a politician? I don't think there are any. Aside from maybe F = MA or Pie are squared LOL.

Laws like "do not kill", "do not steal", have been found long before politicians existed, by the natural selection of societies. That is groups of people who did not follow these laws were largely outcompeted by those who followed.

If you decide to break the law of "do not steal" in large extent you get millions dead like it have happened in communist Russia or Maoist China. If you break it in smaller extent (e.g. by very high tax) you get stagnant economy like in EU.

In contrast to that, the laws banning children to work were adopted at the point when children did not need to work, so they are largely irrelevant. If these laws existed in 18th century London or Paris they would cause many deaths too, since there was no other way to feed these children.

So not all laws are given by politicians.

>I don't know where you live where employing 15 year olds is legal, but even if we assume some kind of state where it's allowed, what mcdolands would employ a 15 year old that was expelled from school?

I live stateside, and I've seen adverts saying they hire 14 year olds

They do but not many and with very limited work hours.

Right now, today, there are hundreds of millions of 15 year-olds with jobs all around the world. In the US this wasn’t uncommon two generations ago.

  > So when you kicked them out of school at 15, what is the state supposed to do with them?

That becomes the parents' problem. Let them find a school willing to take their abusive kid - or have the state come after them for having children not in school.

The threat of such should help encourage parents to actually raise decent children.