The US educational system assumes that most children come from middle class families, where the parents are literate, read to their children, give ample support and believe in education. But poor children start nursery school with vocabularies half as large as more privileged children, so all the testing in the world will not make the slightest difference, and more probably put children off school altogether. Drop-out rates are huge and the old middle class is disappearing.

By 2011 almost half of America’s 50 million public school pupils qualified for free or reduced-price meals. In some Southern States like Mississippi, the proportion is 71% (!). Only in Maryland and Virginia is the proportion of poor students less than half. New York spent $19,076 per student, while Utah spent $6,212 in 2011, part of the difference between red and blue States. (Figures from the Washington Post October 17, 2013)

In a nation where half the population seems to believe in strangling government and paying no tax (if possible) it is no surprise that education is being strangled as well and that the country is heading towards having an underclass, not of just a minority of the descendants of slaves, but of a majority of the country. Since common sense tells you that this is not a very good idea, I need not put unnecessary words into the mouth of Epicurus, except to imagine him saying, “Really? You must be joking!”