The purpose of schooling is to produce schooled minds whose behavior is mathematically predictable. It is to school for an economy in which work has been drawn up into gigantic pyramids of government agency, corporation and other institutions. School is to acclimate generations to the system and to the subordinate role of each microsystem into a macrosystem. Education, on the other hand aims at a unique synthesis of what is with the singularity of each new life. From a system perspective schooling makes a neatly manageable mass.
Education makes efficient but dangerous men and women.
We made it compulsory, for openers. You can t educate anybody by state compulsion, period not that that was ever the intention of the states, beginning with Prussia in 1819, which set out to school the ordinary. The scam has worn thin. Nor is there a way to recreate the precious illusion that schools are fair, that pedagogy is scientific and understands child development better than parents. The pre-emption of 12 years from the most critical time of youth and the filling of each minute with mindless text and meaningless exercises and assessments destroys in most of us the ability to manage our own lives successfully, to bond into loyal families and neighborhoods, to take risks, to be independent.