It's a good thing for Children who want to learn, but who's parents want to send them to the mines instead.

Smart kids willing to learn - how do they know? How do we pick out these smart kids and make sure they get education? Even if they're not from good backgrounds? How do we get these smart kids out of their crappy homes and make sure somebody teaches them something, anything, unless it's mandatory?

YOU may have been perfect, motivated, willing to learn, and may have been given the opportunity to learn even if it wasn't mandatory. Many others would not, many parents wouldn't bother.

It was very noticeable to me, by second grade, who was there to learn and who was just there because they were forced to wake up and walk to a bus stop in the morning. While I was lucky enough to be put into some specialty classes based on previous testing I'd done, the majority of my day was still spent sitting next to kids who were literally drying glue in their desks, pouring ink into it to color it and eating it once it dried.

There's nothing fundamentally wrong with those kids, they just need a different direction and a little more support.

Can't disagree with that. But at that age some of the 'forced to wake up and walk to the bus-stop' kids still have a long way to grow and change.

I don't know the system in the US very well. Kids can go to different sorts of colleges post-16 here in the UK, or could (until recently, this may have changed) opt out at that age and enter the workforce.

Just providing a good environment for learning (teachers explaining things, eager to answer question).

For ones wanting to learn, just don't force them to do so. OK, is someone is not much willing to learn - well, then it may be good to force to do so. But don't force everyone because some need it.

(It seems that forcing people to learn is very inefficient. And I think for that reason many times school are places to socialize, bully and drink doing not much work that it is necessary to survive... and not much places actually good for learning anything.)

Without 'forcing' kids to school, how do we find the ones that supposedly need it?

And how do we get kids who could use it, but from backgrounds that wouldn't bother to educate them at all, into the system?

Mandatory education is a good thing.

Forcing all kids to go to school and forcing all kids to learn are two different things.

As you know, daycare (and, say, crime and accident prevention), training, and cultural/national upbringing are different things, and they work differently, often with contradicting goals and methodologies. Currently we tend to treat "education" as a one thing, but in isn't.

I am all for all kids going to school (unless one can provide a better education), otherwise there would be a disaster of crime and poverty, much alike the one during the industrial revolution. However, what happens inside is extremely far from things which "make sense" both for them, and the society.

I'm not saying there's not vast room for improvement here!

I just don't think that abolishing mandatory education/training/socialisation/what-the-hell-ever is a good idea, and it seems you don't either :)