[LearsFool]

Pollster1, you make your case well, and it's clear you've given the subject some good thought. Compulsory schooling is not reformable. The best we can hope for is, as you say, to mitigate the damage to children.

But rather than argue it further, I would encourage you both - and everyone reading - to listen to a fellow named John Taylor Gatto. I was introduced to him many years ago by a fellow FReeper, whom I can't recall but to whom I'm deeply indebted.

I've never looked at schooling the same since. (I was an excellent student in school, and had been an firm advocate my entire life - up until I began to understand it.)

[Will88]

That’s an almost three hour video. Can’t you provide a few key points you think are important from it? Few will listen to a three hour video from nothing but a link with little explanation as to the content of the video.

[Pollster1]

The best we can hope for is, as you say, to mitigate the damage to children. But rather than argue it further, I would encourage you both - and everyone reading - to listen to a fellow named John Taylor Gatto.

And I would encourage conservatives to get involved in educating children. As a long time Scout leader, I recognize that the public schools are not the only venue that provides that opportunity, but I would argue that, at least for now, the schools are an essential venue. We cannot afford to surrender that battlefield to those who would harm young children, nor can we afford to give up on the children of liberals and of uninvolved parents.

"My eighty-percent friend is not my twenty-percent enemy"
- Ronald Reagan