> compulsory education is built around fundamental denials of volition: the student is denied choice about where they are, what they are doing, and who they are doing it with. With these choices denied, compulsory education shrinks and constrains a student's sense of volition, no matter how progressive it may appear in other ways<p>True but also misleading. Same as: school should not be about learning, but about learning how to learn. But this is not really compatible with mass education. You simply do not have enough good quality educators to enact this at national level for everybody. In my case, in 16 years of school and college I only encountered 3 such people.<p>Same is true for doctors for example. On average for minor problems I was more wrongly diagnosed than not. At first I thought that was bad. But after thinking about it some more: depends what you're comparing this with. Fire all those poor quality doctors and let people self diagnose and self medicate? Not a good idea. So doctors on average need only be significantly better than patients with google search to justify their existence.<p>So in practice the increasingly popular theory "school makes you stupid" (simplified form) does not hold water. Without the admittedly poor compulsory education the situation would be worse. On average home schooling would be a disaster.