To think compulsory national service for young people could be helpful for many?

[Jane379]

The recent thread on benefits generational cycle got me thinking...could compulsory national service period help some young people, including ones like these?

Or would it make things worse?

I wasn’t aware of these nuances, thanks for sharing.

If it helps, the people who'd refuse national service probably feel more frustrated with the political ramifications of NI being in the UK than you do!

Yes, my DC with ADHD would have loved to join the Marines. Unfortunately, they might not have loved his creative attitude to being told what to do. And he has 5 different medical diagnoses that would need waivers, some of which would be a very significant bar to being accepted for service.

Of course. It does feel like a double standard though. If NI has a majority that want to be part of the UK, that is... I know things are changing now and arguably unionist sentiment may be lowering.

Right.

I know I am generalising but I think the countries which have national service and do it well also have fairly cohesive societies and (again, in general, don't come at me!) children are raised to be respectful and responsible. Public service is valued.

Quite different from dragging thousands of actively obstructive, unparented delinquents through any kind of compulsory activity, The administration and compliance systems they'd have to build around it would cost a fortune.

It's interesting pp says the armed forces found 1950s national service teenagers unhelpful too. If so, why? Arguably the social contract was probably the strongest around the 1950s.

I don’t think teenagers are very different now or in the 1950s from eg the notoriously unmanageably violent ‘London Apprentices’ who back into medieval times were a significant political factor in what kings and nobles could actually do in the capital. The young, strong and hormone-fuelled have never taken happily to being warehoused for the benefit of others.

I suppose you're right but I think now there's just not the respect for (or fear of) authority that exists in some other countries.

So while you will always have had people who were unsuitable for the military, they might not have been quite so actively making national service a nightmare to administer through evasion, truancy, misbehaviour etc as you would see now. You certainly wouldn't want to be arming some of them.

I don't think it's about respect for authority at all. It's far more about the way we have shafted our young people. Why should they serve for the public good and set aside their own plans when we are not upholding the social contract that we ourselves have benefited from?

If it were military you might want an exemption for NI, but I don't think there should be national military service anyway. But if it were more of a work experience scheme, then anyone could do it.

The Armed Forces could be included for those who are interested along with various other non-military options.

I think the countries that have National Service and do it well have reasons for doing it that aren't just because they can't think of another way to solve the problem of disaffected youths.

The problem for the UK is that those other countries have either historically had national service for several generations, or have a particular reason for needing to introduce one.

If I was a youngster today and somebody said, 'look, kids, it's all hands to the pump because we are under threat from our neighbours and our military isn't enough to defend us', then I might say, 'OK, then'. But that's not the situation.

You are right to say Public Service isn't valued. But part of the reason it isn't valued by today's youth is because it hasn't been modelled for them. Nobody under the age of 83 has had to do it. I was born in the 70s and my parents weren't old enough to have done it.

It's a bit hard on them to criticise them for not having a value their parents weren't expected to have. That's the biggest difference between us and other nations. Three generations - Boomers, X and Millennial - haven't had to do it in any way, shape or form.

Whilst I do like the idea of, as in Finland, options that aren't just military for doing a service to the nation, we still have to get past the fact that we're asking them to do something we didn't have to do for no reason other than because we think there's a problem with our young people.

If they aren't what we think they should be, that's on us. The idea of a social contract frankly ended with the boomers. Although I love my boomer parents, they are the typical examples of boomer conservative individualism. Look after your immediate family and sod everyone else.

The young adults today are the product of three generations who have prioritised individual freedom and wealth over cohesive social contractual obligation. We lament the loss of the 'village' but how many of us make the effort to be the village for others?

Sorry, digressed a bit there. I don't disagree wholly with you, I just think we are expecting something from young people nobody expected of us.

Yes, but not in the form it used to be. People dismiss it as outdated and even barbaric but I think that’s throwing the baby out with the bath water. I think there’s room to consider a modern equivalent. Renaming it something like National Work Experience and widening it so that participants can choose between military and other areas like care services or agriculture (for example). And students who obtain university places or apprenticeships could be exempt.

People recoiled in horror when Sunak suggested it but he went about it the wrong way. It would need to be a new and very different process from the one our grandparents experienced, and he didn’t make that clear.

My Father was a driver in a Transport Unit between 1940 - 46

He was very much against National Service as even in an 'operational' unit there was a massive amount of 'make work' jobs and as a result skiving.

he thought spending the first few years of your working life in that way was a very bad idea.

A friends father did National Service, he was an apprentice TV & Radio repairer but his apprenticeship wasnt deemed important enough for him to defer it and as a result he was unable to complete it.

One point made about National Service was that it was very disruptive to young mens lives, either they had to complete education or training first and then not manage to get started in there careers or their education or training was disrupted or ended.

We do have a word for using threats of force to compel people to labour.

Compelling other people to labour on your behalf has often worked out well for whoever is holding the whip. I still think whoever deprives others of their freedom is bad.

I think that's an ill chosen comparison.

I don't.

My grandad told me that the one thing he learnt at National Service was how to stretch a job out to last as long as possible so he wouldn't be assigned more "work".

Oh well!