“Youth is wasted on the young” is the age-old cry ~ usually from those on whom maturity is also now being wasted.  But there are modern variations on this theme that are not so humorous.  Education, and it seems welfare, nutrition and housing, are also wasted on the young.  There are those who would abolish tax credits and withhold child support benefits, to discourage ‘the poor’ from having children; and there is growing pressure on the university or college student to pay an ever-increasing proportion of fees, accommodation, books and equipment.

There is no doubt that any system designed by man is likely to be abused by a small minority, but issuing free lap-tops is not going to widen the scale of abuse. However, a system should be designed for the benefit of all, and small-scale abuse could be tolerated, or targeted, rather than deny the majority.

In an enlightened society the state should provide the basic requirements for all its citizens, and the cost should be borne by those who can afford it; additional facilities should be paid for by those who use them.  So the real question is: who benefits from education?   Is it society, or just the students and their doting parents?   Society needs the richness and diversity that stem from different cultural backgrounds; society needs the next generation to be given opportunities and education; society needs leaders who will look at problems in different ways.  And if that doesn't speak to the curmudgeonly, we need the next generation to be sufficiently affluent to pay for our pensions and health care.  

Any attempt to reduce the diversity of society should be resisted.  'Ring-fencing' any section for the protection of other sections diminishes the whole.  The former communist countries of Europe aimed at uniformity to such an extent that individuality was deemed a threat to the State.  And so living conditions were the same for all (except for the leaders, of course), as was education, and the result was one kind of architecture, one kind of car, one kind of economic solution ending in bankruptcy.  In China children play happily in the parks in modern dress, but although living conditions now vary significantly from family to family there is one way in which the children are identical: they have no siblings.  The 'little emperor' syndrome means that each child receives undivided attention and does not have to share toys or parental love.  It will be interesting to see how this generation fares when attention is withdrawn for those on the assembly lines, how couples will cope with having to share a family income and their own single child. 

Our future will be as good as our investment in it, and most investors know the value of a diversified portfolio.  Let us have different sized families from different social, cultural, racial and religious backgrounds.  And let us put money into giving all those children and students the opportunity of an education that will be better than ours.  Some will fall by the wayside, and some will abuse their privileges, but this is our best chance for a future better than our past.  That should be the aspiration of every society.