I'm not "admitting" anything. That would be to connotate that I, as a liberal, am a part of a conspiracy or am complacent with a faulty education system simply because I am a liberal. I think that contention has no grounds and it's only vested interest is to only feed the fire of the left-right paradigm further. Something that is taught in this very education system as something to be taken for granted, by the way (I remember my Government teacher [civics] even literally calling it "the matrix" when he was teaching us of the left-right fields, and he was someone who was unfamiliar with the movies so he didn't realize the irony of his words).

Nor is there any evidence to assume that the education system is wrapped around liberal ideology. Teachers are liberal? Not nearly true. Perhaps it would be more true in large state universities only, but other than that there in fact tends to be more conservatives. With the exception of perhaps inner-city school systems, K-12 schools usually are equally balanced and perhaps even more conservative. I grew up in a suburb of Columbus, nearly all of my teachers were conservative. And yet, I'm not crying about a "conservative education system". And here I thought liberals were supposed to be the whiners. After all, I would be correct in assuming you attended school and college correct? Well now look how well the evil liberal institutionalization program conspiracy worked on you!

I would say that the problem of the education system isn't that myopic whereas the problem lays with only the teaching body, as you contend, or even the student. Perhaps those are factors but I think it has it's roots much deeper. So deep that I would call it a problem of the commodified consumer society. It is a problem of materialism. Children are a major target audience of this consumer society. It has gotten so bad that this ideology has turned (not sure at what point) our education system from a idea and creative-oriented environment to a work-environment. It doesn't teach to exemplify the creativeness of the dynamic human spirit, nor reward those who embody it, but it rather only rewards those with the adeptness toward busy, and rather mindless work. Only those with more values, not better values (It rewards who ever has more 1's, and not those with 2's, 3's, etc.). It doesn't teach the drive to learn, but rather it teaches the excepted duty of learning. For what ends? To get a bigger house and a better car. School is no longer a means to education but a means to materialism. It helps the capitalist society survive but it is detrimental to a democratic society.

This is why there is a shortage of graduating scientists, philosophers, historians, et cetera in the United States. As a scientist you usually hold that learning is what you love, and where you are doing what you love the money eventually comes. Now the view isn't to do what you love but to do what brings in the money. I'm not saying it wasn't always this way, but it is more rampant. In this coupled with the material education system as I have pointed out earlier, helps contribute to these lows in graduating scientists.

You're right... People can be stupid. Many are the epitome of stupid.

It's not only the fault of our education system, although we desparately need to get rid of such counter-productive organizations as the NEA.

I can assure you, from years of experience, that you cannot FORCE anybody to learn. There are too many variables involved.

It's going to take a total overhaul of our culture & society to get our education system on track.