In 2020, the British government outlawed anti-capitalist resources within schools despite recent studies such as Hansen (2016) suggesting that capitalism will likely cause the extinction of all humans and animals within a century. By teaching children that anti-capitalism is an “extreme political stance” (DfE, 2020), the government has removed all doubt about the liberty of educational practice. With this new policy, children are coerced into increasing the likelihood of this predicted outcome by being socialised into predetermined capitalist jobs that have already lead us to an environmental tipping point and will continue to surpass this.

In the context of capitalism and austerity, the legal obligation to attend school is in the best interests of children; however, the enforcement of compulsory education is still not equal: groups such as Gypsies and Travellers often do not exceed Year 9 (Bhopal, 2011, p. 477). Furthermore, it has been observed that working-class children and black children are systematically and disproportionately excluded from education. The meritocratic rhetoric suggests that low attainment or poor behaviour is either inherent or a choice; this is hypocritical due to the idea that children cannot make choices (i.e. age of consent, obligatory school attendance/medicalisation).

Whilst social research in the field of education is generally effective in criticising aspects of the school system that are discriminatory; and other, more theoretical, education texts hint at the use of ageism to coerce children into schooling and a handful of academic texts call out ageism that is specifically targeted at children, key educational academia and research falls short of explicitly linking schooling to ageism. These findings are profound as schooling is perhaps the most obvious and literal form of ageism (forced labour on the basis of youth) and, arguably, ageism is the most prevalent form of discrimination in schools.

MacIntyre says that “the moral content of our educational system is simply a reflection of the moral content of our society” (MacIntyre, 1964 as quoted in Murphy, 2013, p. 183). Designing schools based on panoptic prisons indicates an intent to exercise power over all persons: not just criminals but innocents as well. Ageism is the only justification for these extreme levels of control.

Whilst it is true that receiving a ‘free’ education is the payment for forced labour, it is not enough compensation for the amount of hours students are required to sacrifice. In Sweden, the government pays secondary school pupils to attend school. If a schoolchild in the UK were to attend school 195 days in a year, for 6 hours a day, for a minimum of 11 years, that is roughly 13,000 hours of unpaid labour. At the rate of under-18s minimum wage in the UK, this labour is worth just under £60,000 (enough money to pay off university tuition fees or live independently).

Punishing children teaches them that it is acceptable to be abusive to others. Classism and qualifications based on memorisation can be detrimental to a child’s future. Timetabling and mandatory attendance is authoritarian and facilitates forced labour. Most of all, after considerable research, I conclude that forcing children to labour in school for free for over a decade is a societal norm that depends on the acceptance of ageism. Considering that subject content can be misleading and that one can be punished for not adopting it, the education received in school provides benefit to the child only in the currency of qualifications.

Forced labour should be met with more alarm by education academia; if it was any other demographic of people that are being put to work by law it would be condemned. Future education academia would benefit from discussing school in its proper context: a Victorian institution that can be harmful to children. As the internet provides instant unlimited information, the delivery of knowledge in the school setting (which was designed roughly 200 years ago) is an outdated and unreliable form of education. Given the current environmental, economical and political state of the world, what moral authority does the government have to school the children of today?