National service needs to be

reinstated - and it needs to be compulsory.

I know that won't be a popular idea with some people but I am watching with some alarm two young people who are taking a "gap year" and doing absolutely nothing with it. One of them does have a few hours work now and then. The other is still doing nothing at all. He is spending his days out on his skateboard with a few mates. His parents seem to just accept this state of affairs.  

National service might just pull both of them into line and give them a purpose in life. National service might actually provide them with a way of contributing something.

I mentioned this to a neighbour who was watching the children tear up and down the street on their bikes and boards. This particular neighbour did a stint in the army. He doesn't like the idea of pushing people into military national service but, like me, he thinks a year in some form of national service between school and university is a very good idea. It could even be two years where a teen has no idea what they want to do with their lives and they have no qualifications.

What is wrong with expecting young people to contribute something? Do we really want bored teens hanging around with nothing to do? Isn't that how the worst trouble starts? 

Yes, I know there are teens who have worked incredibly hard through school. They have put their all into getting the results they get. Yes, they need a holiday because everyone needs a holiday sometimes. But do they need an entire year (plus several months) before they start again?

We didn't have gap years of course. They were unknown when I was that young. (It was an awfully long time ago now.) We couldn't "defer" either. You went on with your studies or you went to work. It was not nearly as easy to get any sort of unemployment benefits either. Things have changed. The current system is possibly too lenient but it may also be more realistic. All sorts of jobs once available to school leavers with few or even no qualifications have gone. It seems to me that reason is reason enough alone to introduce a form of national service which would provide, at very least, basic skills for some. This may be nothing more than the basic skill of turning up to work on time and following instructions but it would be a good skill to learn. 

And yes, I would include both sexes in national service. Why not? It seems to me that almost anything would be better than watching the two young people I know becoming more and more dissatisfied and bored with life. They are coming to believe that the world owes them a living...and it doesn't.