“Education -- compulsory schooling, compulsory learning -- is a tyranny and a crime against the human mind and spirit. Let all those escape it who can, any way they can.”

Not shooting the messenger here, I agree that the human being (especially youth) is naturally inquisitive and learns intuitively. To open up a love of learning (as is averse to compulsion) as a basis of all education allows the child's greatest development. I have seen the Montessori method of teaching a child a specific topic when he/she desires it, to be very effective. Parents have a moral imperative stewardship to educate their children to the greatest degree possible.

Got kids in school? Ask to see their Social Studies Text. And I think you'll be surprised at how ridiculous so called "education" has become. Get involved and teach them reality.

Another foolish and trite comment.

there is more knowledge under any rock than in most classrooms

The essence of true education is revealed in the etymology of the word itself.

Ultimately, the word education is derived from the Latin educare:

to lead out, to draw forth from within, as in educe.

Accordingly, the worthiest objectives of education are the cultivation of character and the liberation of ideational processes, particularly of creativity.

The inculcation of knowledge and its characteristic concomitant, indoctrination, which commonly are devices of arbitrary totalitarian and authoritarian control, do not constitute true education.

Mr. Holt finds agreement with me.

Currently, "school" is the wrong way to ID that building. Today, that building is more accurately defined as "Juvenile Day Prison". Today, the Juvenile Day Prison is an indoctrination center spewing government propaganda.

Billy, One is no longer allowed to look under rocks while exploring and must always stay on the path.,,at least in the west. There are signs ever several feet in natural areas to remind kids not to explore anything. I agree with the quote, however, as I had the misfortune to read bits of a high school junior's history book just this last spring. It was scant about history and not very positive about this country.

"Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished ... The social psychologist of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for more than one generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen."
-- Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) German philosopher, psychologist, considered the father of German nationalism Source: Prussian University in Berlin, 1810, quoted by The Impact of Science on Society by Bertrand Russell, 1952