School vs. education

I've recently been invited to be a guest author at a the blog Learning from Dogs, which in a way deals with anything and everything, but always aims to provoke meaningful thought on a variety of issues.  My first post dealt with the relationship between the federal government and poverty, and my most recent post is the beginning in a series on the dynamic between school and education.  I think it is an important topic for libertarians, because we tend to be one of the few groups that questions the effectiveness of institutionalized school (or at least, its effectiveness towards any good end.)  I write:

...I often ask myself just how effective the modern US schooling system is as a tool of education, and whether or not its costs outweigh its benefits. I hope to have at least a rough answer to this question in the final post of this series.

In the following three posts, I will examine three topics:

– In what ways does the modern schooling system function as a positive tool for education?