Nocking Schools

So the years go on and on but nothing's lost or won
What you learn is soon forgotten
They take the best years of your life
Try to tell you wrong from right
But you walk away with nothing
--38 Special

In this 1931 essay, Albert Nock hits on one of the failed assumptions driving compulsory education and public schooling in the US since the beginning of the Progressive era. That assumption is that all people are educable and that they can be taught to similar degrees.

Such an assumption must hold when you are trying to push millions thru the system. The fundamental tradeoff in production is between volume and variety. If you need to educate more students, then you need to do so in a standardized manner.

As Nock notes, we've been pretending as if this assumption is valid, despite evidence from nature to the contrary. And that pretense has created the wasteful process that is our school system.