"Home education's time may have come"

Home education's time may have come
The Independent Thursday, 19 June 2008

'...Compulsory schooling was introduced in 1876 not primarily for the benefit of young people, but because with the curtailment of juvenile labour too many were making a nuisance of themselves on the streets. In an echo of the 19th century, the Brown government is legislating to extend the period of compulsion to age 18, mainly to deal with those not in education, employment or training.
You can have too much of a good thing. If the education that society insists upon means anything at all it will have enabled young people to discover what they like doing and what they are good at. By 16, if not earlier, they should be free to make up their own minds. We should not be criminalising those who do not wish to remain at school and find the government-imposed alternatives unacceptable.
Home education's time, therefore, may have come...'

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/schools/alan-smithers-home-educations-time-may-have-come-849616.html