The more dubious their qualifications for having an opinion on anything, the more strongly opinionated folks are about how young people should be educated. I'll limit myself to observing that in the U.S., unless you were brought up in a religious cult, or worse yet, you failed to avoid being born and raised in what the banks and the county zoning board considered the wrong zip code, there's a good chance that you had access to a reasonably sane, solid high school education that prepared you (in theory) for the next stage in your life. What you went on to do with it after graduation is your business.

What is education for? Some lament that education today prepares students to be economically productive rather than to think critically (as if the two were mutually exclusive!). Some fear that education is a form of thought control, others welcome it as a vehicle for the propagation of the faith -- whatever institution it is you have faith in, and that your elected representatives profess to have faith in. Meanwhile, public school teachers and academic lecturers alike find their freedom to discuss certain topics being curtailed by state and local governments, and/or angry online mobs, frequently working in concert.

"Passionate beliefs," wrote Bertrand Russell a hundred years ago, "produce either progress or disaster, not stability." Personally, I'll take cultured skepticism over passionate certainty any day of the week, but that option clearly isn't for everyone.