Jason

My grandparents were from the peasant classes of Eastern Europe. Peasants didn't have much say in those days, and the aristocrats belabored their contribution of educating the children of peasants to Grade 3.

I think you have a rosy picture of history. Most illiterate or semi-illiterate people do not become the movers and shakers of society. We can't look to the one in ten thousand who break the social caste they were born into.

But many people of east European descent in Canada did become engineers and doctors and business people and many other occupations. Without a strange public education system that almost forced parents to send their kids from Grade 1 to 10, this successful people would not have been as successful.

Sorry, I totally disagree that somehow children can a acquire the necessary skills without public education. Maybe the rich people have options, but most of us do not.