There's several issues I've noticed as a student. First, kids are told to go to college immediately after high school. If college was high school 2.0, this would be fine. But college is completely different from high school; it's significantly more expensive, more free form and more rigorous (at least compared to most high schools). I see so many students who clearly have no clue what they want to do, why they're in college (beyond "my parents want me to") or how to accomplish their goals.
Having seen the sheer quantity of kids struggling with simple stuff like cleaning, cooking and not drinking themselves to death, I'm becoming more and more in favor of a mandatory service at the age of 18. Maybe not military like the IDF, but some sort of program where kids are forced to go away from home and learn to be self sufficient. Little Bobby should learn how to scrub a pot and clean a bathroom before he's entrusted with a 240k education. I took a gap year and I was significantly more focused and disciplined than I was in high school. And way better than the majority of my college peers.
But even worse than being unprepared for college, I feel like we've been fostering a poor attitude towards learning. I grew up in an academic family, so to me, learning wasn't a stage of life. Learning was an essential aspect of being alive. Going to college wasn't some arbitrary merit badge that society deems necessary. It was a natural extension of whatever field I wanted to study. I see college as a tool; I need to learn certain topics in order to get what I want in life. Of course, I'm very fortunate to have taken a gap year and worked as a programmer. If nothing else, I know that I like programming, I'm good at it and I'm willing to suffer through the painful parts. It's kinda good to know that before I spent 240k on a CS degree.
Some form of mandatory alternative civilian service may be of use here in the US. Hypothetically, 'cutting the apron strings' may improve physical fitness, national identity, common understanding, and widen the shared views of the conscripts. Here in the US, the Vietnam war was the most recent event where nearly every family and citizen was affected and were forced to interact with each other.
Anecdotally, vets on campus tended to be more 'serious' than ones that were not drafted. That said, most vets would have elected not to have undergone the experience regardless of their level of involvement in the war.
Also, the costs of such programs are very high. If you look at military conscription today, it is limited to countries with small populations or ones that are actively threatened. Mobilizing, feeding, housing, and caring for nearly 450,000 people is not an easy task. The net benefit of this conscription is ambiguous as well. Denmark used to use their conscripts in the care of the elderly and in wildland firefighting, but has since degraded that from their service. Doing so here in the US may be of benefit, but not at the costs that would be sustained. Such work is better left to the professionals, typically.
I'm not even close to an expert in this field, but a cursory look at it suggests that the cost/benefit ratio is not close. However, the same can be said of nearly any educational endeavor, yet we know that on a decadeal timeline it pays for itself many times over.
The problem is the mandatory part. Even the standard education is in large part optional for both students and parents. Its a gross violation and overstepping of fundamental liberties to have grown up free to turn around and point at our descendants to then say they must be forced to serve.
The Vietnam Draft will go down in history as a gross human rights violation of a generation of young adult men. That war was a proxy battle of world powers to send their young to die to line the pockets of their militaries and their contractors all in the name of ideological and economic conquest paid in blood.
In contrast, the WW2 draft is vindicated in how influential US support was in turning the tide on both fronts. US involvement invariably saved millions of lives and helped stop tyrannical genocide across Europe, Asia, and Africa. Violating the liberty of your citizens for that kind of end is probably righteous, but don't let the widows and parents bearing the flags of their fallen sons hear I said that - they died in large part to save the citizens of other nations, not for their own.
I strongly support a public works program that anyone can enroll in for a contracted number of years. Anyone lost entering adulthood should have something to fall back on that can help them contribute to society - and we sure as hell need it in the US, the infrastructure is crumbling disastrously and the country is massive and can use a substantial amount of hard labor maintenance. It is just that none of the financial incentives are there, or regulations are perverse enough to skew away private capital from fixing many of these issues. Regardless of why, we can see a ton of work we would like done, but don't have the money to afford ourselves, individually, or even as small businesses, but can accomplish collectively and publicly with something like a revitalized civilian corp of engineers.
> Of course, I'm very fortunate to have taken a gap year and worked as a programmer.
I told my youngest sister to take a gap year to figure herself out. She didn't, and now years into college she has decided to switch studies, just like I did. Luckily we're Dutch and this is actually a realistic possibility for us.
I very much agree that the default should change on college coming directly after high school. Sounds like we had pretty similar paths -- I also took a year off after high school, and did a lot of traveling that I funded by programming (I had a fair amount of previous experience). I feel like that year gave me a ton of perspective that I didn't have before, and while I knew that I liked programming beforehand, I think I gained some new appreciation for it. The one "issue" with that year off is that it's clear to me that I could have foregone college and still done well for myself working as a programmer, which definitely doesn't make me more motivated to finish college, since I much prefer working to going to school...but I'm not convinced that that's actually an issue, and I'm definitely really glad I took that year off. I'm much more disciplined and focused than I was before.
Just to piggy back on this comment: there is a strong case for mandatory military service. Just going to list bullet points.
- Would help people mature before diving into the next stage of life, especially immature people whose upbringing has failed to imbue them with responsibility.
- Would boost civic participation. When everyone's kid is at risk of dying, everyone pays attention to who we're going to war with and why.
- Would provide structure for people when they are at the point when they could do the most damage to themselves or society (young adulthood).
- Would strengthen military power; every citizen would have at least a small amount of military training, if we really need it.
- Would greatly diminish stratification of social/cultural/economic groups. Would help get people out of the bubbles they grow up in.
- Would increase physical fitness and health of the population.
I see very little downside to a mandatory 2 year military service.
There is a huge real downside, and it is a massive one, is compulsory military service begets reasons to use the military.
Most of the free western world has recognized the invalidity of a large standing army or extravagant military spending. Money going into war is money totally wasted, literally burned up in bullets and bombs and lives.
In the US at least Eisenhower was already talking about where we are today becoming a problem back during his presidency 60 years ago - that the private enterprise built on military contracts would lobby congress to see the military used and expanded to give them more money. The US has refined to an artform the practice of making conflicts to send its young to die in to line the pockets of investors. One of them was both the former CEO of a major defense contractor and the damn vice president under the guy who started permanent endless war against a concept in a desert on the other side of the planet for going on twenty years.
The west and world at large should be happy to not need to train and send their young to suffer and die in war. Nuclear deterrents have functionally eliminated threats to homelands protected by them. Russia and China might be antagonists on the world stage against the capitalist establishment but they are also nuclear powers and thus no war can ever be waged against or involving them directly. It all has to be theater, destroying arbitrary swathes of third world nations in proxy wars meant to justify profits on both sides for private men who sell bombs and need to insure there is somewhere for the government to drop them.
The US and almost all western democracies should be moving towards demilitarizing entirely. There are still useful functions of militaries in defense of borders in most nations - fighting pirates, smugglers, etc - but nation-state level actors will not move against anyone pointing weapons that could glass their whole country in an hour, so wasting the valuable time of millions of young adults preparing for a war that cannot ever happen is all around a disastrous waste of time and money.
There is also the fundamental freedom angle of it. If you want to have kids spend the last two years of public education enroll in something akin to a communal public works labor program instead of teaching them Shakespeare and ancient Sumerian history they will never use that would be more defensible, but it is grossly inappropriate of anyone to say that full adults should be forcibly conscripted en masse against their will for no reason that could remotely justify the breach of their liberty.
Agreed that military service is not the ideal direction. I'd prefer some form of service closer to say, charity or Peace Corps. Now whether people would fund that is another question entirely.
Having seen the sheer quantity of kids struggling with simple stuff like cleaning, cooking and not drinking themselves to death, I'm becoming more and more in favor of a mandatory service at the age of 18. Maybe not military like the IDF, but some sort of program where kids are forced to go away from home and learn to be self sufficient. Little Bobby should learn how to scrub a pot and clean a bathroom before he's entrusted with a 240k education. I took a gap year and I was significantly more focused and disciplined than I was in high school. And way better than the majority of my college peers.
But even worse than being unprepared for college, I feel like we've been fostering a poor attitude towards learning. I grew up in an academic family, so to me, learning wasn't a stage of life. Learning was an essential aspect of being alive. Going to college wasn't some arbitrary merit badge that society deems necessary. It was a natural extension of whatever field I wanted to study. I see college as a tool; I need to learn certain topics in order to get what I want in life. Of course, I'm very fortunate to have taken a gap year and worked as a programmer. If nothing else, I know that I like programming, I'm good at it and I'm willing to suffer through the painful parts. It's kinda good to know that before I spent 240k on a CS degree.