1) We are rich today because we have lots of high-tech machinery. From Otto and Daimler to Ford and the Wright brothers to Bill Gates and Steve Wozniak, much of this technology was created by self-taught hackers. Some industrial/engineering education was helpful at points, but it played a much more minor role, and it comprises a tiny fraction of K-16 education today.
2) The modern American schooling system is so degenerate it is actively destructive of the engineering/hacking ethic.
3) 90% of jobs in the economy require nothing more than reading, writing, and arithmetic plus on the job training. Before the establishment of public schools, New England states had 99% literacy rates. Thus historical evidence shows that public schooling was never necessary. Poor people did not reach the middle class through public schools, they did it by finding jobs, teaching themselves skills, and working their way into the middle class. Most though, achieved middle class status because the tools invented by hackers made them far more productive. An assembly worker in 1925 was richer than a worker in 1900 thanks to Henry Ford, not because public schools taught him to build a car more quickly.
4) Despite the fact that public schooling has little or know connection to creating high tech machinery or to teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic, we dedicate an insane amount of time and money to it. As the article noted, 40% of Americans are either full-time students or full time educators.
5) Education spending outpaces inflation year after year, while the quality gets worse and worse. See this graph for instance ( http://lazowska.cs.washington.edu/img082.gif )
Given these facts, I don't think arguing for complete abolition is unreasonable at all. When you have a cancer, you do not sit around thinking about how you might be able to mutate that cancer into something beneficial. You remove the cancer.
> 1890
If I were black, or Italian, or Chinese, or something else that wasn't very well thought of in 1890, I think I would have a vast preference for the public schools of 2008. I happen to be white, but I believe that one function of public schools is to give everyone something of a shot at a better life than the one they happened to be born into.
Note again that I'm not saying things are perfect the way they are, or that there aren't many good reforms that could be done to improve them (I think we'd probably agree that giving teachers' unions less of a role would be sensible). What I was stating is that compulsory education, despite some very obvious defects, has served us pretty well, and that "throw it out!" without suggesting something better is an uninteresting discussion, albeit far less intellectually demanding. I don't really think I'm up to the challenge either: I'd rather just concentrate on hacking and startup.