School learning is a poor fit for a variable portion of the population.  A lot of kids don't want to be in school, they don't want to listen in class, and they don't want to do homework.  I didn't want to be in school, listen in class, or do homework when I was young, so I understand entirely.  I think the proportion of kids who don't want to be in school and who resist the whole process has also been rising in recent generations, as it's become less of a route upwards and more of a meaningless series of hoops that guarantee nothing.  Why work hard towards a pointless goal?

totally agree... with the internet one can pursue self-education like never before, once one is alphabetic and numerate it's a feast for the curious.

school -as is- is redundant, a form of lobotomy. it can take years to heal the psychic lesions from bad schooling and rediscover the joy of using one's intellect for the sheer deliciousness of it.

Zwackus:

Go dig ditches in the forest

better plant trees!

when it comes to american ed, it's a big problem that to be incurious is seen as cool.

asia will eat our lunch because the idea of family obedience and economic progress through education is more real to them than it is in the 'west'. it's cardinal, it's religion to them. a means to an end... money, social climbing.

we tend to have a more idealised form of educational philosophy, enlightenment through developing the 'higher faculties' bla bla. nice idea but it doesn't pay the bills in today's world for all but a few.

being able to work electrical circuits, basic plumbing, building skills (taught in HS in morocco), these are worth something in the real world.

in india i read they teach old grannies to become economically independent through maintaining solar arrays, yet there's no equivalent chez nous.

it wouldn't surprise me if in 50 years we are back to 90% working the land, as before the industrial revolution. just add high speed broadband, renewables and cheap public transport and parochialism is over.

learning the skills needed to farm, to preserve, to use natural modes of healing, these will be more useful than any number of MBA degrees.

and justly so... it's community that sustains and grounds people, and industrial capitalism shreds that social fabric as surely as it rapes and pollutes the commons that sustained those of the community who weren't whizzkids of some form.

of course if we paid teachers a lot more, and created more playful curricula, we might see big changes.

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty