America needs education, but it gets education reform

Governors Work to Improve H.S. Education:
"At least one agreement is likely. Achieve, a nonprofit group formed by governors and corporate leaders, plans to announce Sunday that roughly 12 states are committing to raise high school rigor and align their graduation requirements with skills demanded in college or work."

The recurring summits and studies and pledges of education reform have about as much use to students as churning accounts has for investors. Accounts are churned to make money for brokers and education is reformed to put more money in the hands of educators. That is all it does.

It seems absurd to say that the problem can be solved in the high schools. Or, even to say that the high schools are the place to start. Bad as they are, high schools are not where the rot begins. We don't really expect much more of our high schools, even those we rate as doing a good or adequate job, than to teach what my grandfathers had to know to get through the seventh or eighth grade and qualify to enter high school a hundred years ago. If we could get our primary and intermediate grades up to the old standards, we could scrap today's high schools entirely and be just as well off.

It should be apparent to any truly objective observer that the education system exists for several purposes and that imparting knowledge to children is not the first of these in importance, nor the second. The purposes, it seems to me, include (in no particular order):
To inculcate a spirit of obedience to government
To subvert all other allegiances to family, religion, etc.
To delay entry into the workforce
To provide unionized employment at high wages for large numbers of people
To provide fantastic opportunities for graft and corruption in contracting for facilities and supplies
To provide a minimal skill set to be exploited by future employers
To free up women to participate in the workforce