Agreed, a civilized society should have a basic education curriculum which all students may participate in, regardless of sex, religion, or socio-economic statu

Agreed, a civilized society should have a basic education curriculum which all students may participate in, regardless of sex, religion, or socio-economic status. This is the minimum bar that all should be granted. However, most of the comments here seem to be assuming that school is 100% of a child's learning. If you are a "gifted" student, then there are plenty of hours in the day to develop other skills. Or pony up the cash for private school. The public school should be for educating the public. When I was young there was already basically two tiers of education within the public school, the AP track and the vocational track.