All Hollowed Out: The lonely poverty of America’s white working class
I think it's worth pointing out that education is a filtering mechanism,  if a terribly inefficient one. After basic maths and literacy are learned,  it imparts little on the average student. A collage degree is a proxy for a reasonable IQ and moderately high conscientiousness. Thinking of education as an inefficient filtering mechanism helps illustrate why our frenzy for more education is misguided. Certainly more efficient filtering mechanisms (like a test-based credentialism where instruction and assessment are separated) would be very useful but they will not increase the amount of people with the mental characteristics (high intelligence and conscientiousness) that are becoming increasingly valuable in the modern economy, nor will it decrease the portion that lack these things. Panning does not create gold.<p>I think a good assumption is this separation was and is a basicly unavoidable result of technology and economics, not any policy or set of policies. We wrestle not with flesh and blood:<a href="http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/07/we-wrestle-not-with-flesh-and-blood-but-against-powers-and-principalities/" rel="nofollow">http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/07/we-wrestle-not-with-fle...</a>