Why Does David Deutsch Reject Compulsory Education?

Chris Williamson asks what a better approach is for somebody who wants to learn a lot from people who know a lot, and whether people should exit formal education as quickly as possible. Chris Williamson presumes the entire system cannot be upended right now immediately. David Deutsch says upending is outside his wheelhouse. He does not know how to formulate good political policies that will gain wide acceptance. Technically, he says, with the internet there are now the means of completely upending the system and not having any compulsory education, certainly for children.

David Deutsch says there are more and more ways of adapting university education to technologies like the internet and collaborative technologies. Access to somebody can be very valuable where compulsory subordination to that very same person would be very bad. Today anyone can write an email to any famous person and have a reasonable chance of getting an answer, even if it is only "read my book, you dolt." He says the situation is a lot better than things used to be, even 30 years ago. Even 30 years ago, in his opinion, it would have been better not to have compulsory subjects and not to have compulsory education of any kind.