HOTR on Public Schooling

Public schooling in the Northwest was superior to anything in any American university, and many European ones. The Culture and Education Ministries were convinced by the catastrophic American precedent of the last century that the devil made work for idle hands, and that it was in the interest of both society and of the child to keep him out of trouble by making sure that from kindergarten onward, until the boys went into the army and the girls went to college or marriage, school was a full time job.

--“The Hill of the Ravens”, pg 63