Its kind of missing the point to bring up the notion that all the economically advanced countries have public school systems that go on for years, when most of

Its kind of missing the point to bring up the notion that all the economically advanced countries have public school systems that go on for years, when most of the people arguing against the education system would probably agree that its main purpose is to turn individuals into a compliant, unquestioning, regimented work-force required by such a system. What's more interesting is whether schooling exists to supply an economic system, or whether it should exist to create a rational, creative, questioning, skeptical, critical thinking population. Is that the measure of a successful education system, or a successful society? I think the really dangerous thought is not that the people in the schools are special snowflakes held back by the system, but the realization that those at the top are not special snowflakes and are instead propped up by the system. Because then even the very faint illusion of meritocracy as a justification for the distribution of wealth and our current system falls apart completely. Perhaps a good education system would also have to face the friction between freedom, merit, enlightenment, democracy, and economic output. The US has a strong ideological undercurrent that the earlier factors directly lead to the last. I would argue not only that is it possible that there is in fact potentially an economic cost to a free and enlightened populace, but that such an ideology primarily exists in the US as a social-psychological-bulwark to justify the position of the wealthy. To chip away at such a subconscious connection would lead people to the realization of the dangerous thought I mentioned in the preceding paragraph...