Great Heros! Geh!

[Kralizec]

I admire your optimism. In my experience, they are very, very much out to screw people and spend inordinate amounts of time planning how to do it more effectively. I find it hard to believe the kind of outcomes one sees are by happy coincidence born of genial incompetence.

But I recognise that old age brings much experience cynicism.

Rigging the education system so that future voters would be easier to mold would only yield results after 12 years, probably more. While many (or most, if you prefer) politicians are corrupt in the sense that they look after themselves rather well, I doubt that they plan that far ahead to ensure success for their party after- I'm somehow reminded of masonic conspiracy theories.

Using myself as an example wasn't meant to prove that most kids don't like school- they're not able to vote, in any case. What I meant to say was that even many adults couldn't care less that school curriculums are reduced to bare minimum of "knowledge that really matters"
Apache hinted at another factor: the performance of individual schools, as well as the education system as a whole are often measured by the percentage of pupils who actually receive a diploma upon leaving. It's known that setting quotas from up high in practice causes the people further down to hollow out the criteria. Political short-sightedness and the instinct of self-preservation below causes this, not political masterminding.

Also, while the Soviet Union had a very accessible education system and thus good literacy rates I'd be careful about praising it. Unlike "our" systems it was definitely regarded as a tool of indoctrination. Physics and chemistry didn't suffer partly because it wasn't likely to collide with the party's ideology and because they were vital for the military, but many other areas did.