Rishi Sunak’s reinvention of national service is a desperate, last-minute election gimmick. But that does not make it a bad idea. If there is one phase in education across Britain that is way off course, it is the higher teens. Sixth-form, higher and further education are deeply reactionary, more plagued than ever by introverted academic syllabuses and obsessive testing. For decades it has eluded progressive reform.
Sunak’s idea of a year’s military training would be a costly waste. The army has said it does not want amateur conscripts. The defence of Britain against improbable attack requires highly skilled operatives, not trench-war cannon fodder. By all means recruit more of them, but polls show that barely 10% of young people would volunteer for war service and a third would resist formal conscription. Under Sunak’s plan, an overwhelming majority would choose the civilian alternative of spending one weekend a month for a year in a public or charitable service. Germany’s non-military alternative to national service – both it and military conscription were abolished in 2011 – was hugely popular.
This must be a good idea. Working under supervision even for a few days a month in the care sector, the NHS, emergency services or selected charities could be a civic duty welcomed by every public-spirited citizen. As “community service” punishments have shown, such work can require expensive oversight. But it should be advantageous to all parties, to hard-pressed services and to the individuals involved.
If anything is clear about young people’s mental health, charted by Jonathan Haidt’s bestseller, The Anxious Generation, something is going seriously wrong with teenagers today on both sides of the Atlantic. Social-media addiction must play a role. But it also reflects a schooling steeped in rote-learning and a fixation with exams. Syllabuses are in the dark ages, neglecting teamwork, personal health and presentation, civic responsibility and the handling of money. Sport and the arts are seen as lesser subjects.
It must be good to draw young people out of what the home secretary, James Cleverly, rightly calls our “fragmented” society, with its social and digital “bubbles”. Some form of public service, military or civilian, already operates in roughly 80 countries round the world, including France, Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland. It broadens the outlook of young people, rich and poor, and brings them into contact with public services. It may even encourage them to go straight into work rather than potentially waste years at university.
Labour has felt obliged to ridicule Sunak’s idea, which as yet is just a concept to be put to a royal commission. That is sad. The party has barely an educational idea in its head. Britain’s young people leave school pitifully ignorant of how the communities in which they live operate, of their weaknesses and their strengths. Both parties should turn this desperate innovation to good account.
Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
