The education establishment itself has of course been all in favor of keeping teenagers in school long past the point where it is accomplishing nothing, except providing jobs for teachers and administrators. Those jobs are not a small thing, as far as the National Education Association is concerned. And the NEA, with its millions of dollars in campaign contributions, is no small thing as far as the politicians are concerned. At one time, child labor laws were used to stop youngsters whose ages had not yet reached double digits from working in exhausting and dangerous factories and mines. Today, they are used to keep big healthy teenagers from handling pieces of paper in air-conditioned offices.
Education is of course important.
But, like many other things that are important, how much of it makes sense varies from person to person, as well as according to circumstances. Not everyone should continue on to get a Ph.D. and then receive a post-doctoral fellowship. Much of what is called education is glorified baby-sitting, producing little more than artificially extended adolescence. The stringency of today's compulsory attendance laws and child labor laws prevents many young people from getting the kind of maturity that can only be found in work and in personal responsibility. If nothing else, many teenagers need to get out of their adolescent subculture and into an environment where they can draw upon the experience of adults around them, instead of absorbing the fads of similarly immature peers.