Compulsory Education and the Responsibility of the Psychiatrist: Instrumental Case Study

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17991179 Compulsory Education and the Responsibility of the Psychiatrist: Instrumental Case Study Dijkhuis, L. Background: Education has been compulsory for children since a hundred years ago. Purposes of education are: qualification, socialization, and subjectification.1 In Sweden and The Netherlands, one-third of the children liked it very much, one-third were indifferent, and one-third disliked it very much.2 Maybe psychiatrists should study compulsory education as a case of compulsory care on: 1. the only way of eliminating serious harm, 2. proportionate (not excessive for the serious harm that needs to be resolved), 3. effective (yielding results). An instrumental case study was performed to identify experiments. Methods: Instrumental case study by one reviewer. The case was the task: describe your dream compulsory education. The participant was a Dutch female medicine student in her twenties. Results: The participant’s dream compulsory education was that it ended at the age of fourteen years old instead of eighteen: ● Primary school (NL basisschool) would run until the age of fourteen years old instead of twelve. Its compulsory subjects were: language, math, and drawing. The rest of the school time was reserved for free-learning. A big catalogue with study material could be filtered by: difficulty level (six levels like CEFR), subject, and type of intelligence (e.g. Gardner’s theory). Students could choose between classroom learning (i.e. active teacher) and homeworkguidance learning (i.e. passive teacher). The tests were as flexible as the Cambridge English test. The study guides were like Lonely Planet’s travel guides. ● Secondary school (NL middelbare school) would run like the preparatory course of the Dutch Royal Conservatoire (i.e. by invitation only when it has become clear during the audition that there is reason to do so). Conclusions: The first identified experiment to study compulsory education as a case of compulsory care was: the child scores oneself in Virk’s model Four Quadrants of Passion3 (fig. 1) per each purpose of education (qualification/socialization/subjectification1). The second identified experiment was: a follow up on compulsory education during puberty. Puberty was one of the reasons to extend the years of compulsory education.2 However, Australian Aboriginals act differently: a walkabout at the age of twelve years old or thirteen (i.a. solitary journey in the wildernis). The third identified experiment was: a follow up on prolonging childhood rather than allowing them to enter the adult world (e.g. Rousseau’s theory)2. References: 1. Biesta, GJJ. (2010). Good Education in an Age of Measurement: Ethics, Politics, Democracy. Routledge. 2. van Rooy, P. (2018). Een Geschiedenis van het Onderwijs in Nederland. Wereldbibliotheek. 3. Virk, R. (2018). Is it Time to Shut Down (or Leave) Your Startup?. Medium. https://medium.com/swlh/is-it-time-to-shut-down-or-leave-your-startup-9f740078987b 1/2 DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17991179 Figure 1 // Four Quadrants of Passion3 2/2