Jerry Pournelle

Modern education is already approaching a Dark Age. There are a few who remember when the purpose of schools was to teach students, not to provide certificates and credentials; but that old-fashioned notion is nearly forgotten. Today’s schools exist to provide credentials for a price. A few books, like Jacques Barzun’s wonderful Teacher in America (Liberty Press, 1981; ISBN 0913966797), tell the old story, but for the most part the very purpose for which schools and school systems were designed is known to fewer and fewer each year.
—Jerry Pournelle, “Education in America”, BYTE.com, March 14, 2005