“Far from failing in its intended task, our educational system is in fact succeeding magnificently, because its aim is to keep the American people thoughtless enough to go on supporting the system.”

Excellent quotation! If a system appears to be consistently failing, and is made even less rigorous, we have to ask, is that system perhaps succeeding brilliantly at its true aim--an aim that hadn't even occurred to us? As von Goethe said, "The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes." Wow.

YES ! a great start at the tip of the iceberg, having a broad enough premise to expose the the whole cancer.

I wish I had said that, it sums it up perfectly.

How true, How true!

This plain, clear statement is wonderfully refreshing. Federally mandated education of children is when this country began it's decline into the socialist web that has enclosed our society today. The only way to cut our way out is to turn the education of our children over to the states, and keep home schooling as an option. Open it up to the market for competition.

The Department of Education is fulfilling its mandate spectacularly which is to mold obedient wards of the state. America is being taken over from within and it couldn't have happened without the DOE. And Obama wants to get kids enrolled even sooner under the government nanny-state. This is classic communism.

strikes me as one of those "they" arguments... and I love how E argues that only communism wants to educate its children, LOL...

The Federal Department of Education should be completely and ultimately disolved. Education in this country has been going down hill ever since the invention of the DOE. Schools should be operated by local communities and overseen by the individual state in which it resides. Instead of having all of our eggs in one basket, one federal supreme scheme, we would have 50 different programs from 50 different states. They would be able to collaborate, expand and improve on each others ideas and learn from each others mistakes. The chances of finding the most superior means of education would increase exponentially and the citizens would have greater control of the education of their own children.

Mandatory education by the state IS communistic -- it's one of the central planks. I love how Reston thinks what he got from a government school was an 'education.' ;-)