Knowledge can be successfully transmitted and received only by those who recognise its value. If our governments have regarded education as valuable, however, it is usually as a means to some political goal unconnected with knowledge. As a result, our school system, once the best in the world, is now no better than the average developed country for numeracy and literacy.
Many on the left see schooling as a form of social engineering, the purpose of which is to produce a classless society. Equality is the real value, and when knowledge gets in the way (as it often does) it must be downgraded or set aside. Many on the right look to education for the skills that the country needs in order to maintain our economic position in a competitive world. On this view, those children who show no aptitude in hard subjects, or who take up too much classroom time to achieve too little, should not be allowed to hold back the ones whose skills and energies we all supposedly depend upon.
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