Education should be a privilege, not a right

Should schooling, at least to a certain degree, be mandatory? Yes, it should. Let me explain why. As it stands, in most states, you are required to attend school until the age of 16. Either then simply giving young people basic knowledge, there are other reasons for schooling: 1. Younger children, mostly coming from broken homes, do not understand the importance of an education. Their parents often do not care to explain the weight of a decision to quit school at an early age and if they drop out of school in an early age, or never go in the first place, it will never be explained to them and they will not understand until it is far to late and they are stuck working in a drive through for the rest of their lives. Even most younger children coming from good homes will not understand what an education will do for them in the future and until they are old enough to understand, they should be kept in school. Think about it, when you were a child, did you understand that without school you would probably end up in a dead-end job? Most children think school is a boring place the parents send them and that they would so much rather be home playing video games and hanging out with their friends. They don't know that schooling is muchly needed, and without parents to force them to go or to explain to them why to go, many children would be doomed to drop out and never return. 2. Schools are used to discover abuse. Children who are abused are most often discovered by their schools. If they are allowed to drop out or even forced to drop out by their abusive parents, how many child abuse cases would go undiscovered? 3. A basic understanding of morals and discipline is taught by the schools. Without this, the crime rate will surely go up. If a family doesn't teach their children and the school isn't allowed to teach the children, many more children will grow up without an understanding of discipline and what is right or wrong. Without basic moral belief, many children are doomed to a life of crime and a psychopathic personality. It is important to have schools teach children this, so they can grow up to be good American citizens. 4. It is selfish to force children who do not understand why an education is important out of school before they are capable of understanding. Just because they are disturbing you now, it does not mean they won't grow up to be more responsible and understanding. And if they still dislike school at age 16, they can drop out. On to my opponents arguments: "1) Education has become a mandate" Yes it has, and it is important that education is mandated to at least a certain age. So that way we can be certain the students at hand understand why education is important. "2) Many students take education for granted" This is true and it is because many students don't understand the importance of an education quite yet. It is selfish to say 'That kid is annoying, we should kick him out because he is young, foolish, doesn't understand the importance of education, and is disturbing my studies' What you lack in understanding is that children are just not capable of making the decision to drop out or to be kicked out yet. It isn't until they are older that they are able to do this with an understanding of the repercussions. As far as the argument that goes, 'Disturbances should be removed, no matter the age' I know of many children that acted out in grade school and even Jr. High, that calmed down as they grew older, and become very intellectual students winning scholarships and completing college. "3) This leads to a regression in society" The reason why other societies are more advanced in education, is because they have much stricter rules. I highly doubt your or I would be capable of performing up to their level of expectation. Most students spend all of their time in school or studying, otherwise they can not possibly pass the difficult curriculum, their families can not afford their education and they are forced to drop out because of a lack in funds, many incredibly smart students are forced to drop out based on their yearly testing, and the competition is steep. You not only have to be willing to work incredibly hard, you must also be born into a family that values education and holds enough funds to send you to the basics of education, and you have to be born with gifted intelligence. Although the economy might seem better in other countries, their lifestyles and education systems are much more difficult. Do you truly want an education system similar to this, where only the very bright, lucky, and rich succeed? This education system is also why other countries are less advanced. They have many capable people that never finished school, who do mind numbing jobs instead of jobs that they could of done (Science, research, etc.) and so they use their masses of unintellegent no longer capable people to do grunt work to make imports for the US. they have job shortages in many important fields, such as medically and scientifically. They might have a good economy, but most people are poor and their is a larger space between the rich and the poor then there is here. So is it true that other countries do better academically then us? Well, it is true that the few students that make it through the education systems tend to have much more knowledge then our students, it isn't true that their education system is better. You see, they grant a few lucky students a pass, and then give the majority a fail, while we give the majority a pass, and a few idiotic students a fail. You do realize, that currently, the US is dominant in the world, correct? This might have something to do with our education system... "4) Parents will get involved when education has the potential to be taken away" Not if the parents never cared in the first place. Then intelligent and capable children will be wasted. In fact it might even promote parents to care even less about their children, if they no longer believe their child has any future, why should they care about feeding, clothing, and giving them a safe place to stay? "5) Making education a privilege will solve many of the problems with the education system" And it will cause many more problems. It will allow children to do far more poorly then they ever would have done if they would have been allowed to continue their education, it will force capable but, not very bright children out of an education, it will allow for more things like child abuse to occur, and it will allow for some very capable and bright children to be left behind. Your saying that we should switch out the problem of 'disturbances' with the problem of 'children being left behind' "6) This debate is only on whether this is a good idea or not." It isn't.