One of the most important issues adults face in their lives is education and schooling, since what kind of schooling a child gets is instrumental in creating chances for a better life later on. Yet the traditional tracks and mainstream options routinely short-change students. Partly that is because, as entailed by the ‘local knowledge’ argument developed in earlier chapters, it is not possible for a distant third party to know which form of schooling is best for you or your children. Only you can know that, based on your knowledge of yourself, of your children, of your conception of the good life, of your schedule of values, and of the resources and opportunities available to you. Since with respect to you I too am one of those distant third parties, in this chapter I do not attempt to lay out a curriculum of education that you or anyone else should follow. Indeed, on my argument, there is no single path everyone should follow. Instead I try to convince you here of two things: first, a child's schooling is more deserving of his parent's personal attention than is sometimes assumed; second, the current American system of educational provision needs radical reform.

WHAT EXACTLY IS THE SUGGESTION?

In Part I, I staked out and defended a conception of moral personhood, and the freedom and responsibility it entails, as well as a conception of government that I argued was necessarily limited by that conception of personhood.