<If laissez faire education is the answer - as it would be in the best of all libertarian worlds - what do you do with what Scrooge called 'the surplus population' who, for whatever reason, are rendered unproductive to society and themselves by a lack of even the most basic knowledge? To be completely callous about it, it's a matter of trash removal. Which costs more: reducing the amount generated, or cleaning up the superfund sites?

Again, the assumption is that a large portion of parents would simply opt out of education, or select stupid educational options, and let their kids grow up to be idiots. And again, such parents are the exceptions, rather than the rule. And given our current literacy rates and other measures of a decent education, our current system isn't exactly winning prizes either.

Out here where I live, it is interesting that it is actually the wealthy who tend to sluff off the kids in some oddball school and ignore their educations. The parents in poorer families are actually much more diligent about their children's education, researching schools, supporting vouchers, volunteering in classes, and even scraping to somehow get their kids in a private school.

This is not too surprising: as with our immigrant ancestors, the value of an education is never more obvious than to those who may not have been able to get one when they were young, and want better for their kids.

The private sector does a spectacular job of meeting many of our essential needs, such as food, shelter, and clothing, and I see nothing about the field of "education" that would make it an exception.

Whenever some proposal is raised like vouchers, or other methods of giving families more choices and better quality education, the educational establishment treats it like a cobra on the dinner table. I can't help it if this makes me suspicious of their motives.