"Policy should rise to the level of their ability. And so when it doesn’t, or when it’s done in a way that you think is corrupt, it really makes you mad.”   John Stewart Live At The USO

Our institutional education system has often been compared to our military system.  Its hierarchical, regimented, controlled, a morass of convoluted policy wonk.  I deeply appreciate and agree with Stewart's anger at the wasted lives of our soldiers.  And I don't want to belittle loss of life by comparing it to loss of innocence.  

But this quote grabbed me.  Policy should rise to the level of their ability.  Across all strata, in the military, at work, and in our schools.   We're not just wasting precious lives fighting an asinine war over oil and political ego.  We're wasting our national reserve of potential, intelligence, ethics, and creative problem solving every day all day through our society's choice to institutionalize (and extend and coddle) childhood.  

Someone recently pointed out to me that parents eager to abdicate their responsibility for educating their children often choose to call their method unschooling.    Nothing is required of the parents or the children, everyone is lazy, and choice is justified under the umbrella of unschooling.  Of course that happens, a twist of our more socially acceptable abdication of parenting:  just put the kids in school.  As long as the children are marching through the program, society offers parents the assumption of method, plan, and good intention.   Parents are exonerated from results, children have only to march, and teachers get paid.  The choice is justified under the umbrella of institution.  Institutional plan, institutional method, institutional intention.  Meanwhile, smart parents tend to have smart children, no matter how they are schooled.

Institutional education is so mediocre, often mean spirited, competitive.  It does not reflect the best adult working environments.  And for all that, its not making children smarter.  So what's the point?