Capitalism sucks at valuing things that don't give immediate profit. Education is such a thing - it has extreme ROI... 20 years down the line. Which is too long a time and it gets valued less than small changes that will bring in a little bit of money next month.
And even ignoring that(for example, at private schools), the 'consumer' here is really the parent. The child isn't in a position to choose schools, so it's really about selling to the parent. I imagine it has to be hard to get a sense of any 20-year projected ROI if you can only indirectly measure teaching quality by what your child says and standardized test scores.
The tax base that funds the schools depends on the whims of capitalism.
I suspect that education would be a much higher priority and teachers would be paid much more if children could vote.
Except this argument doesn't seem to apply globally: I have a good friend over here in Europe who's got a PhD in computer science. He works as a researcher in a renouned university. His sister is not a kindergarden, but elementary school teacher.
She makes (slightly) more money than he does. Her work day starts at 8am and most of the time ends at 2pm. She's got around 10 weeks of vacation per year. She cannot legally get fired if she performs badly.
So in this country, my friends knowledge and high level skill levels certainly weren't a value multiplier when compared to his sister.
Granted, he might be able to get a higher paid job with his background, but that brings us back to the grandparent's original point: your education is not a good predictor for your salary.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/why-are-finlands-sc...
And then the kids grow up, and you are fucked. Do you think the first ever important thing those kids learn, for society, is when they become 20+ and one day they start learning compsci-simulated-quantum-biomolecular-teleportation-of-artificial-intelligence-nanoparticle-drug-dynamofeedback 101? (Yes, if it's not obvious, I just pulled that out of my...)
She gets less, cause the system doesn't care about if the world in totally destroyed 30 years down the road. (Actually that would be great. Opportunity for "growth" and profit.) It only cares about billions yesterday.
You make more than your sister doing "less" work because knowledge and high level skills are a value multiplier. You may come up with a world changing idea that generates billions of dollars. No kindergarden teacher could achieve that. Pay matches accordingly.
Your second point is that there seems to be a lot of people with useless jobs and I couldn't agree more. We're RAPIDLY approaching the point where most people are employed to do basically nothing of value. How many people's jobs could be replaced by the mythical "script" written in a day by a good dev?
I'm glad to see us get to this point. People should learn and practice useful skills. So as not to cause a violent revolution, I think we do need some form of basic income though. That would also enable creatives to experiment and produce without economic pressure which I think is great. I also don't care if 99% of people mooch off this model as most people are just wasting time at work as it is anyway.