But Its Even Worse Than I Feared - Tumblr Posts

After reading this post, I have had some thoughts, and because I'm annoying I'll be posting them here.

We all know that the world of Lockwood & Co is fucked up, right? Child soldiers, shitty adults, ect. But to understand just HOW fucked up, you kind of have to understand some things about the education system in the UK:

Okay so, for any readers who aren't aware, in the UK compulsory education generally goes:

Ages 3-11: Primary School

Ages 11-16: Secondary School

Ages: 16-18: College/Sixth Form (Note that in the UK they don't call University/Higher education 'college'- University and getting a degree generally comes after graduating college/sixth form.)

By law, you have to stay in compulsory education/employment/training until you're eighteen. I'm honestly not too sure what happens if you just drop out, but I'm fairly certain the parents/care givers get in some kind of legal trouble if the the govt is informed that the kid hasn't been showing up for an extended period without reason (ie, prolonged illness,) especially before they're sixteen and haven't taken their GCSEs.

GCSEs stand for General Certificates of Secondary Education, and kids generally sit for these qualifications at 16. You sit 1-3 papers for each subject you take unless it's graded differently, so around 12-15 exams. At the start of secondary school a student will generally be forced to study all the subjects that the school offers- for a specialist or religious school this could mean studying things like Intro to Buisness Studies or Religious Education alongside compulsory subjects like math and science. Then after a few years, usually at the age of 13/14 (or 12/13, in some schools,) students are instructed to choose three subjects to continue studying alongside the compulsory subjects and drop the others that they don't pick.

I won't get into how this is kind of a little messed up- due to how the education system works, these choices can impact a kid's economic future as an adult and it kind of requires the kid to already have decided on what career they want- but know that the GCSEs you take and the grades you get in them can determine what college/sixth form courses you'll be able to take depending on the college/sixth form.

A-Levels are one of the qualifications that can be studied at a college/sixth form and are generally the route taken when you're planning to apply to university straight after graduation (if you don't want to do that you can possibly just wait a few years and go to uni as an adult learner, but you have to study something because you have to legally stay in education until you're 18,) If you do that, then the A-Levels you have can determine what University courses that you're able to apply for, as some universities have specific requirements beyond getting good grades in your chosen subjects. Typically a person studies 3 A-Level subjects though sometimes if they think you can handle the workload they might let you take on 4, and generally you have to sit 2-3 papers for each unless they're graded differently.

On the other hand there are apprenticeships and Level qualifications that are also offered at some colleges (called FET or TVET colleges) . These generally teach you a trade instead of a subject and sometimes you can possibly get a paid apprenticeship with a company while you're studying (theoretically this can lead to a permanent job after graduation,) - things like plumbing, construction, health care, hair dressing, management, child care, etc.

This is all fine and dandy if you're under eighteen and have followed this path of education set out for you, but what happens if you decide as an adult that you want to get different qualifications so that they're, say, more relevant to your job, or so you're more likely to get picked for a promotion? Or you want to get onto a course at a specific university, and they have strict entry requirements? Well in the real world, adults can choose to study college courses for a price tag- education stops being free after eighteen. These usually consist of night-classes at regular colleges/sixth forms so that the adult learners don't interact with the regular students.

This is nice if you've got your GCSEs, but what if you don't? Most universities require at minimum a passing grade in Maths and English- if you go apply to university as an adult learner (or 'mature student', as is the used term,) then they'll sonetimes make you take a course in maths and English at your local college/sixth form and then sit an exam even if did take your GCSEs and passed those subjects if enough time has passed since you originally sat them, presumably to make sure that your skill in those subjects hasn't degraded. The vast majority of universities won't accept you if you don't pass this exam, and most colleges that offer Level qualifications would be dubious about accepting you too.

Well, not to worry! In the real life UK, there is an option: The Open University, where you don't need any qualifications to study with them. Originally the Open University was designed for working-class adults that may have been forced to drop out of education as children due to having to work to support their families before education until eighteen became compulsory, (Education until sixteen didn't become complusory in the UK until 1972,) therefore having no qualifications. Founded in 1969, originally the university mailed learning materials to students and broadcasted lectures on late-night television, recognising that the people forced to drop out of education as children were now adults with probable familial/job obligations that would prevent them from travelling to or staying at a campus.

Now, at last, let us address the world of Lockwood & Co. In the books, Marissa Fittes and Tom Rotwell discover the link between iron and ghosts, and ghosts and Sources, in 1962. To my understanding the timeline was moved up a bit in the Netflix series so that the 'The Problem has only been around for fifty years' can be true alongside the show still taking place sometime in the 2020s. (The books came out in the 2010s.)

The newspaper articles that show in the opening title sequence reveal that the conversation around 'Ghost Touch' begins in 1972 (I read that in an article about the show, but I haven't checked,) with the article about 'Waves of unexplained deaths,' printing around 1969.

Now, we don't know how this effected the education system for sure- you'd think that, at least in the early days, there'd be some sort of protest from people about taking a large portion of the youth out of school and making them fight ghosts, but the thing is, this isn't really far-fetched based on what we know about the state of education in Britain at the time. The vast majority of working-class adults had no traditionl qualifications, and taking kids out of school so that they could work was very normalised, at least in working-class areas and communities.

This fits in with what we see in the show: the world seems to have stagnated somewhere in the 1980s and Lucy, a working-class northern girl, is taken out of school at 13 in the show and begins an apprenticeship with Jacobs at 8 in the books (presumably while still attending school, its not clear,) whose world seems to have stopped in the 1970s, as there are no mentions of things seen in the show like tapes. Compare this to the 'Sensitives', children with Talent but whose families are rich enough that they don't actually have to do anything dangerous. I can see work as a Sensitive being a way for many middle-class kids to earn a bit of an allowance while still being able to go to school- if lives don't depend on the work that they do like they depend on an agent's, then they can probably afford to only work weekend nights or nights a few times a week, so their studies aren't impacted too much.

In the series I think they aged everyone up: Lucy is 16 where she was 15 in the books, Lockwood is 18 (15) and George is 17 (16.) Lucy at least should be preparing for her GCSEs and choosing whether she wants to go to a sixth form college ( which offer mostly A-Level courses) , a FET/TVET college, or get a job.

She isn't though, which begs the question: what happens to agents after they age out of their Talent? Jacobs was once an agent and now runs his own agency; in the books, (spoilers,) Kipps becomes an adult supervisor of agent teams and is given a pension by the Fittes agency for his years as an agent. It's not clear if all agencies do this, if the ones that do do it voluntarily or if it's some sort of government edict.

Is that all there is for ex-agents? Toiling along in the same industry that turned them into traumatised child soldiers? Given how early The Problem started, it's unknown whether alternative options for education like The Open University still exist; certainly adults wouldn't be able to take night classes at colleges and sixth forms due to the government-enforced curfew. You can pay to take your GCSEs as an adult, but as an ex-agent with a full-time job paying for the hours of tutoring and the book studying required depending on how much foundational stuff you've missed and then paying to sit exams you might not pass may not seem worth it when you have a paying job- or an alcoholism habit to fund, as seems the case with many of the adult supervisors in this universe. In the books, night-watch kids can be as young as six and seven, guys. There's a lot that they're missing.

How many kids have just vanished from school after their parents/carers found out they had Talent? How many kids without Talent see that their friends have disappeared, and know that that probably means that they've been forced into a profession with an absurdly high mortality rate? How many attended their funerals? The generations that were born after The Problem began are all traumatised in some fashion.

I mean, no wonder the economy's stagnated. A good portion of the youth is being taken out of school and not being allowed to innovate fields that need innovation! And the adults they become can't easily access education!

There will be, of course, exceptions. Ex-agents who did manage to get into university or trades outside of the Defence against Ghosts industry, just as there were working-class kids who managed to do the same prior to 1972. But they'll be rare. It'll be a roll of the dice whether you survive long enough in the first place, and whether you'll be able to cope with your trauma without resorting to alcoholism or other destructive methods. Whether you'll have the perseverance to put up with the slog of getting qualifications sixteen-year-olds who didn't have to go through what you did have. Of figuring out what you even want to do beyond this, all you've ever known, because you have to pick the relevant subjects to study for your chosen career.

Now excuse me while I go feel sad about this :")