My word... you'd think from the above that 'skoolin' was somehow important... it isn't. "Skoolin" is a form of "mass production/indoctrination" that is intended to produce a uniformly mediocre "product" while keeping young people a) out of the workforce; b) off of the streets (at least temporarily); c) away from knowledge that would allow them to become "disruptive" economic forces.
Did "Skoolin" ever teach a kid how to talk? Or do kids LEARN how to talk on their own?
Did "Skoolin" ever teach a kid how to walk? Or do kids LEARN how to walk all by themselves?
How does one become "educated" -- well about the only skill needing to be mastered is the "trick" to reading a phonetic language...
After that, you can "teach yourself" whatever you are interested in by reading books and articles written by other people. The you READ, READ, READ.
Vastly MORE information about the entire history of the human race, plus engineering, sciences, and all of the world around us , exists WITHIN the pages of a solid Encyclopedia (good ones can be bought at Used bookstores for a $5 or $10 bill these days) -- yes MUCH more info exists there THAN IN ALL of the heads of the "Teachers" plus ALL of the "textbooks" at any given "Public School" -- there literally is NO comparison.
And for all of the Technical skills that require "applied" knowledge -- whether carpentry or driving skills -- are still BEST learned in the same way children have learned to talk & walk for millenia... by observation and emulation of their elders (sometimes this is called "playing" -- but children MUST have the "observation" portion before the "emulation" part has any value -- and keeping kids locked up in a room PREVENTS the observation of actual adults);
And yes, this means the "apprenticeship" or "interning" advocated by others in this thread. Once you've acquired the basics, then you learn by doing, reading, doing, doing (or trying, failing, and retrying until you get it right).
Does it result in "perfect" knowledge? Heck no... but it does result in a far BETTER "product" than "skoolin" ever did. (Just ask Edison, Tesla, Einstein, Ben Franklin, Henry Ford, or the Wright Brothers!)
All human children start out as "auto-didacts" -- people able to "teach themselves" new skills -- this is driven OUT of most people BY the boredom, frustration, and sheer idiocy of the public schooling system.
Go read some of the works by John Taylor Gatto. Or the other books by John Holt (such as "How Children Learn" and "How Children Fail").
Go lookup the F. W. Olin University for how they are starting to "change" engineering BACK to what it was BEFORE the 20th century. (Engineering is a discipline FAR older than our "education system").
Go digging and learn about the "Unschooling" movement.
IMHO, your question was actually framed the wrong way, the TRUE question is:
How does ANYONE manage get educated (at all) WITHIN the public education system we have today?
This is one of the best posts on education I have ever read! For you young-uns, make note of what WRellim says here.
Without question, the best "teachers" in my life weren't teachers at all. They were my parents and other family members, plus a number of other folks I've learned from through the years
most of whom were high school dropouts.
And indeed, with my own children, they've learned more hanging out with me than they've ever learned in school. This year was a real eye opener--my kids learned more about the constitution, natural law, liberty and American history than I could ever have hoped for in my lifetime. I never imagined that we'd be debating political issues and discussing the bill of rights, etc. over our evening meal!
Did they learn any of this in skool??? Aw, HELL NAW! They learned it from
overhearing my conversations, asking questions, reading and participating in several political events. My 13 year old daughter even "took on" her socialist Western Civ teacher in front of the class over an issue with which she disagreed (I was soooo proud!!).
Someone mentioned parents not having enough time to be around to teach their children. Yes, thanks to the fed.gov and their social policies, parents aren't around as much. Not to mention the fact that we've received a societal brainwashing that the Almighty State should control children from cradle to grave. Parents aren't qualified and need not apply unless they have the "appropriate" State Sanctified documentation. Look what was done to homeschoolers in California.
What you'll never learn in publik skool (unless you're really lucky) is reasoning, logic, critical thinking, problem solving, practical life skills and good 'ol common sense.
I opted for private skool for my kids and have found it lacking as well. Maybe there are good private schools but ours is little more than publik skool on crack, and you get to pay out the nose for it; same text materials and curriculum (boring, expensive, useless and full of social engineering) but they just cover more material at a faster pace, require more busywork so it appears that they're educating and obsess about SAT scores and who gets into what prestigious college. I guess I should be happy that our skool doesn't resemble a prison, unlike the local publik high skools.
Publik skool taught me to hate reading (only became a voracious reader as a young adult,
after high school) and, sadly, private skool is doing the same for my children. I was totally bored in skool so it comes as no surprise to me that my kids feel the same. I'm having a really difficult time trying to motivate them knowing precisely how they feel. Thus, I am now toying with the idea of taking them out of school, at least for some period of time (my mother is having a stroke over this) and trying some other methods of learning and re-developing some auto-didactics.
Most insidious of the education system in general, beyond the social engineering, is how boy children are treated, conditioned and "educated". I hate that they're expected to act like compliant little girls, there is neither recognition nor acceptance of the fact that boys are hard-wired to be active, physical and hands-on and that their interests are completely different from girls'. And boys who don't conform to this ridiculous "standard" are labeled ADD or ADHD and drugged so they become zombies. My son is a case in point: if I hear one more teacher tell me that he won't sit still and pay attention (he pays rapt attention to things he's interested in) or have to have one more conference about my son's (rather excellent and detailed, but verboten in skool) drawings of weapons, I think I shall scream. The education system is doing him and most boys, no favors at all.
Sorry for the long rant but this is one of my favorite subjects for discussion.
There's some great advice on this thread. Bottom line: never let skooling get in the way of your personal education.
There are thousands of ways to learn, every day, all the time and there are already threads here where many of these ideas are discussed. 
