Thread: Is mandatory education a mistake?

Throughout much of the course of human evolution, the education of children centered around the acquisition of skills that were immediately useful to survival. Furthermore, this education was largely participatory in nature: one learned by doing and improved skills along the way. As DuB pointed out in his thread The real benefit of learning a musical instrument at a young age, this can have a profound influence on how one approaches situations later in life.

Our current education systems stress accumulating knowledge as the focus of education. The only skill I see being gained, aside from social skills which kids are going to learn anyway, is how to memorize, regurgitate and forget facts. Granted, this is a generalization as many children do find areas that genuinely interest them but many more simply learn that learning consists of sitting behind a desk for eight hours a day while listening to someone talk at them. They learn that learning sucks. Furthermore, they forget most of what they learn anyway. How many adults could pass high school graduation exams by the time they are thirty?

This is, in my opinion, a true shame because kids come into the world as 'learning machines'. Should we scrap mandatory education and let the children that want to learn learn what they want? What is the benefit of it? Would letting children ask questions and lead their own education result in a better educated populace? Or am I just stupid?