Exactly: the take I got from MAD is that the lesson Education teaches is not what it claims to be teaching, but how to survive, if not thrive, between the lines

Exactly: the take I got from MAD is that the lesson Education teaches is not what it claims to be teaching, but how to survive, if not thrive, between the lines of a bureaucracy. If you manage to live despite the machine in K-12 (when the bureaucracy is at its strongest), then it's all downhill later in life, when you could actually spend time in a karass or two, and at least get more and more control over what you're doing, when, and with whom.