Brings to mind Paul Graham's "Why Nerds are Unpopular": And as for the schools, they were just holding pens within this fake world. Officially the purpose of s

Brings to mind Paul Graham's "Why Nerds are Unpopular": And as for the schools, they were just holding pens within this fake world. Officially the purpose of schools is to teach kids. In fact their primary purpose is to keep kids locked up in one place for a big chunk of the day so adults can get things done. And I have no problem with this: in a specialized industrial society, it would be a disaster to have kids running around loose. Where I agree with Richard Elmore (the author of the article) and disagree with Paul Graham is that the only alternative to having kids in the school is having them "running around loose".