How deep should the school get involved in socializing? How far
   does a school's responsibility extend to replacing the role of
   parents?

   I've heard it said that Western education's end goal currently
   is to produce College Professors. Of course, can we have a
   society of college professors?

   When I was in 6th grade, I announced to my mother, "Mom, I don't
   need to learn any more math. I know everything I'll ever need".
   She laughed and threw a parent-type puzzle at me, "How do you
   know you won't need to know it if you don't know it yet?"

   Well, I made it through school. I still think I'm right though
   Most of the stuff beyond elementary school was nice and all; but
   most of it to me was social survival after that. I could do the
   coursework; it wasn't hard for me. But did any of it stick?
   Well, the next thing that made a real impression on me
   educationwise was learning about Linguistics and Sociology in
   college. A lot of inbetween years of just going through the
   motions. The stuff that stuck from 6th-12th grade had everything
   to do with friends, fictional TV and books that I read, teaching
   myself computer programming... and the generalized knowledge?
   Once I could do math and read and write, the rest of it was
   cultural, really.