If you can get your kid reading, and liking to read, that's half the battle. From then on, even if all the schools disappear in a puff of purple smoke, he can still learn.

I can remember the first time I caught my little daughter sneaking a light into her room to read after she was supposed to be sleeping. Snuck back downstairs and did a five minute Happy Dance.

When I was a teenager, there was still a big fork in the road after high school between college and vocational school. There were other roads, including taking over your dad's business or farm, but those weren't as common. Interestingly, at least where I lived in the Midwest, there was no real stigma attached to a vocational career.

I agree that a broad education is a valuable one. I played a clarinet in high school, but have forgotten everything I knew about it. My kids picked up instruments for a while, including guitar, but lost interest.

^A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.

Specialization is for insects.

- Robert Heinlein, "Notebooks of Lazarus Long"^