We do not need to go to school as much as we are forced to.

First, I would like to establish that like my opponent, I do NOT see our educational system as being perfect or not in need of great and systemic change. However, I am thoroughly convinced by the evidence that rather than less education, we should rather have quite a bit more. In an effort to clarify and assist PRO in his induction into debates, online and elsewhere, I would like to use this first round to attempt to give PRO an insight into my own views o the purpose of education; it may eat my character space, but it is no great loss if some understanding by one side or the other may be gained. First, I'd like to address you, PRO, with the assurance that I DO understand where you are coming from. I remember all too clearly my youthful days where I myself was frustrated with what seemed like such a waste of time, a painful and incessant bother which served no apparent purpose and wasted a great deal of my time. But in much the same way that when you realize the solution to a problem, and feel foolish for being ignorant before, and making decisions and declarations that only the ignorant would have made, when I remember such statements that I made, I feel as though I was such a fool in those days. From observation, it appears that PRO's arguments are built atop the assumption that school is meant to prepare youthful individuals so that they are able to adequately perform functions they would be expected to do as "adults". And while this is A specific aim of school, it is not THE aim of school, especially when talking about compulsory education. THE aim of school is to expend all necessary effort to produce a human being, rather than something that is merely a human shaped animal... or at least an animal less dangerous if unleashed into the world. I can teach a monkey to sew shirts, or kick a ball down a field, to mix one substance with another. I cannot, however, teach a monkey how to recognize the existence of another monkey as a consciousness fundamentally the same as itself. I cannot give it a concept of mind. I can only, arguably, do hat with a person... and even a lot of people just end up like the monkey, solipsistic and nihilistic. It is NOT about figuring out what is needed or what is not. If it were solely about what was needed in life, we would simply throw you into the world, and you'd lean from your peers those skills you would need. Monkeys do that; no school is necessary in that case. Compulsory formative education (for PRO, this includes the education you are currently being forced to attend) is fundamentally reliant on the idea that the child is NOT yet an "adult"; that they are incapable of being afforded the freedom to be, as they are either ignorant or unable of the steps required in making informed, logical, and reasoned decisions. But also, there is the understanding that when a person is capable of making such decisions, once they are fully "human", they have an entitlement to be free of natural evil. The idea is that when someone is an adult, that they become an adult as free as society can possibly make them from natural evil; that they have as much "freedom to be" as we can give them. And one of those Natural Evils is ignorance. Of history, of science, of philosophy, of both what is and what can be, as both your experience is quite limited, and as you have not had the time to carefully figure out the rules of the universe you live in. Further, none of the things you are taught are taught solely for your own good or your own use; we adults are not just in the business of equipping you for the future, we are in the process of blunting the edge of the ignorance you would wield if you were freely loosed into the world, and to prevent those both clever and wicked from wielding you yourself as a weapon in your ignorance. We teach you "science" in high school. I use quotes because the compulsory "science" that you are taught isn't the meat and bones of it. Rather, we teach you the theories that science has produced, we teach you the best knowledge that we have sussed out, so that when you are confronted with the fruits of that knowledge, you accept the reality of it; it does nobody any good when some adult kills kids that we've put effort into because he was never sufficiently taught the germ theory of disease. Maybe if you take some of the more advanced science courses, you'll really get a feel for application of the scientific method, observe, hypothesize, test. Science is to keep you from being a reckless git when you get older. We teach you PE because we don't want to share the world with fat people, or play games with people who don't even understand the rules, or be forced to bear the shared costs of people who are fat and unhealthy. We teach you foreign language and culture because it's a pain in the butt living with/around people who don't understand that the person who speaks some specific language, the person in that culture, is exactly as human as the next guy. Not too long ago, it was thought that someone who spoke a different language was somehow stupid or inferior; really, they're just human, and language is something different groups of people just made up as they went along. And part of it is to respect how hard it is to learn a foreign language adequately. If you can understand that, then maybe you'll be less of an jerk to someone who has a heavy foreign accent and who has a hard time speaking your native tongue. When it comes to rhetoric, logic, argument, speech, and debate, we teach you these things in the (possibly futile) hope that you will walk away with the ability to use deductive logic, and the idea that DOUBT is the source of knowledge. We teach you these things, specifically, with the hope that you will learn them, and thus have the tools (if not the initiative) to become more than a human shaped animal. We teach you math, because it is necessary for ANY advanced understanding of the universe. But calling what they force down your throat in HS math is an insult to the term. Learn set theory, Calculus, Discrete Math, Trig, and Geometry. Any hominid can learn how to push a plow and work an assembly line. It takes a full fledged human with a strong sense of math to DESIGN a better assembly line. Religion? You think that learning religion is important? Well, I suppose it's a back-up for keeping the human shaped animals from being particularly destructive... but catholicism? really? That's like suggesting throwing down oil to put out an electrical fire. Seriously, that particular idea lead to ignorant gits sacking cities and torturing people for engaging in secular philosophy... Art/Music is taught BECAUSE it is a way of teaching you how to waste time. SPECIFICALLY. Once we solve the evils that plague us, all we will be left with is loads and loads of time, with nothing better to do than to be creative. It puts all of us ahead of the curve to be able to make stuff that isn't utter crap, when that time comes, or in the mean time when we seek to take a break from human effort, and do something for us. What is the rest of life, after all, if not to secure ways and opportunities with which to creatively waste time? Technology is taught so that we have some guarantee that you're not going to waste society's time with calling tech support lines. Though largely I agree with PRO here; we don't do enough in tech; we should be forcing our kids to look inside the black box of the computer, and tinkering and programming, and making them say hello world on a command line. In order to support the claim that "we do not need to go to school as much as we are forced to", PRO first needs to present a reason why we are forced to go to school, and then establish that certain substantial activities and classes do not in any way further that goal. I would see this as a shared burden of proof. I look forward to seeing PRO advance an argument that both states and supports his idea of the purpose of public educati