[Gatac]

The school system is actually a more controversial (in my mind) problem than you might think. I would much prefer giving children the opportunity to tackle prepared "units" of knowledge at their own pace, plus whatever else they want to know, then let them take tests to earn something like a GED at a fairly young age and move them into an apprenticeship-esque situation where they can start learning on the job fairly early, maybe 14-ish. This sounds counter-intuitive as hell, I know, but institutionalized education has some very real problems; read John Taylor Gatto's Underground History of American Education, for example - you may not agree with his conclusions, but he does cite a lot of historical information and makes a lot of criticisms that seem to be hard to refute. Among the most disturbing ones is the idea that a lot of the shortcomings of the Western educational system, such as it is, are not bugs, but features, like adapting a way of teaching children to read that actually retards their ability to pick up new words. Scary stuff.

I have no near-future plans for raising children, because I believe that that would require me to have a degree of financial independance so I can homeschool them effectively. I don't think teachers are evil or anything silly like that, but I do believe that I could provide a better learning environment myself than a school. However, I also admit that my research in this topic has been less than thorough, and I'm liable to refine or even change my opinion until the actual decision needs to be made. I also realize that homeschooling is far from being the best for everyone, but I do think we need to encourage it and slowly reduce the burden on public schools, as well as take a few serious looks at the curriculum.

Gatac