Albert ends his article with the "real" question: What should the education system for our kids be? I wonder if there isn't another question hiding behind this one: Who gets to decide? I haven't read Spady's stuff, but John Gatto suggests the present system of compulsory education arose at a time when people were starting to get Utopian ideas (and techniques) about how they could control entire populations and hence markets: compulsory, systematized education was key to that control.