Education: Should Schools Be Abolished?

My grandmother wanted me to have an education, so she kept me out of school.

—Margaret Mead

It takes no fancy theory to point the way to education. People learn best when driven by curiosity or necessity, a sheer "need to know." Formal schooling aims to create that desire on a mass scale. But when schooling is compulsory, what it often creates is apathy and boredom, an invitation to rebellion.

Such problems now plague the U.S., which leads the world in mass schooling. Student discontent, failing public schools, financial pressures—all these lend new weight...