Others develop bad habits caused byby forced dependence on others for their most basic needs. They are taught not to work but to rely on others. Not only are the original laws against sweatshops in place, and the laws barring youth from employment, but it is argued that young people must also be forcibly sent to and detained at schools, the specifications of which are set by remote educational bureaucracies and specialists who have no incentive to run schools well, but every incentive to make them run poorly and thus increase the size of their departments. It is obvious that compulsory education does nothing to prevent young people from working in sweatshops and other unsafe and unrewarding workplaces. The only other argument for it rests on the presupposition that it teaches students more than they would otherwise learn.
Humans are naturally curious.
Our curiosity and will to learn is part of our nature, and what differentiates us from inhuman animals. Today, learning and knowledge are more accessible than ever before. Books are inexpensive and enormously variant, auditory and audiovisual educational methods abound, from auditory tapes to television documentaries, and telephones, inexpensive letter - carrying, and the Internet put almost every American at easy reach of a friend or expert in a field. Despite this new availability of information, ignorance is increasing in the United States and test scores are plummeting. Despite the fact that compulsory education is three times as expensive as it was thirty years ago, even adjusted for inflation, the United States consistently achieves dismal results from its school system.