Example: grade 1-5 can have children of that age range in that section for five years. Ditto for grade 6-9 etc. this way, children can learn at their own pace and time. And from their peers. Gives them more flexibility.

Schools should be for social education too and learning how to become adults. Parents should be more involved in forming peer groups rather than schools.

School buildings should be the only tax payers funded capital expense. And a skeleton crew of teachers with something like khan academy. Schools are where they can congregate for group studies or games or swimming pools or sports or music rooms or robotics meetups or shop work or fill in the blank etc.

Parents should raise children and make decisions. Not school unions. Also..why should those without kids in school pay taxes for everyone and sundry forever? There should be a base minimum towards public contribution for public education(the capital cost of neighborhood school buildings etc), but cost of raising and educating children should be shared amongst those whose children are studying. This will also help people make financially responsibly decisions as well location preferences when they want to grow and raise a family.

I am appalled that the govt..at least in the USA..has the responsibility of child care, child rearing and the other education. What are the parents doing? Parenting doesn’t end with just birthing your progeny.

In many cases, the purpose of education depends on socioeconomic class or what you, your parents, and/or your social groups decide to take for yourselves.

Nearly everybody promotes widespread basic literacy for social cohesion and basic employment functionality, but higher skills are more of a battle ground. Many people do not want others to progress past the basics for a variety of reasons. One is a fear of "overproduction of elites", another is fear of competition from fully developed people with nice critical thinking skills (cue up George Carlin and his comments on critical thinking).

I'm interested in all time estimates for educational programs, know about Finland's general time frames for youth education, don't know about other national norms, and am happy to hear any suggested readings or other ideas.

As far as socioeconomic class, overproduction of elites and critical thinking skills, I think it is plainly obvious that education systems do not help. I did not learn critical thinking in school, I learned it in life. In fact, what I'm doing right now is critically thinking about the role and effectiveness of rigorous education. They don't do that in rigorous education.

Overproduction of elites cannot happen through rigorous and standard education, it underproduces capable people. I should note that I do not think you can overproduce elites, I want everyone to be one.

I'm not saying that a person doesn't need an education. What I'm saying is that a child doesn't need 13 years of full time schooling and I'm saying that a classroom is not an effective place to learn most things we need to learn.

When we fund schools with property taxes as we do in the USA, then we make education a speculative activity. Disastrous outcome guaranteed.

Your society might work in the 23rd century with Jean-Luc Picard. It doesn't work in the 21st century with Tim Cook and the quarterly report.

Why do we need the money of someone else to educate our children? Why do we go to work to pay the taxes that keep our kids in what amounts to a prison? Maybe part of how you get that 23rd century society is by stopping with this long and drawn out compulsory education charade. Teach people what they have to know to function in an advanced society, let them find their own interests and learn the things they need to learn to do the things they want. What about our current society precludes that from working? Tim Cook's existence?