Coming of age in the WW

[carin_in_oh]

No: HPFGUIDX 86897

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "justcarol67" <justcarol67 at y...> wrote:

> So my question is, first, what does coming of age constitute in
> England and how does this match up with the WW?
> 

I'm sure our British members will comment on this with more specificity and authority 
than I can, but I can report what I observed when I lived in England in the 1980's. At 
least as the educational system was then, a much smaller percentage of the 
population went on to university than is the case in the US; consequently, relatively 
few students stayed on at school to do A-levels (ages 17-18). Secondary school was 
still very much the basic qualification for many trades and jobs, unlike the US where 
college is becoming more and more obligatory for anything but the least skilled jobs. 
As a consequence of the job market and the (comparatively) small numbers who 
expected to go on for a higher degree, 16 was still very much the ordinary school-
leaving age - after O-levels, the equivalent of O.W.L.s. I was often surprised to see 
how very young the junior and trainee-type full-time employees were that I 
encountered in businesses in the UK - young to my eyes even when I was in my early 
20s! It's been my sense in reading the HP books that the WW operates on a similar 
system, especially since, as we've discussed before, it seems to lack institutions of 
higher education.

Carin