If you look at the type of employee the schools are putting out after 12 plus years of repetetive mundane work, boring teachers, testing, and only being rewarded when they stay in their seats and do what they're told without complaining, it's no wonder the job market is the way it is.  Walmart and the fast food industry is what helps drive education to be the dumbed down factory that it is.

Also, anyone who uses Walmart to illustrate free market capitalism is barking up the wrong tree.  So many people think, "who cares what Walmart does - if they can make big bucks from screwing their employees and having slave labor in China, so be it.  This is a free country." 

Walmart receives so much government subsities, it is sickening.  Yes!  One of the biggest employers in the world and one of the richest, receives a boat-load of taxpayer money -in many forms, such as free land:  www.walmartsubsitywatch.org  

If the government is going to continue to steal from me and give my money to a company, I think that the government should be able to regulate that company and force them to keep their jobs in the US and force them to pay their workers a decent pay so that they do not require more stealing from me (government assistance).

Michele, I suspect that the government-run "education system" is ... the way it is, because an ignorant compliant populace is easier to manipulate than a populace that can do critical thinking for themselves.

What we have in this country is a "managed" democracy, and a managed democracy is a truly wonderful thing -- if you happen to be one of the "managers."

And the greatest asset of a "managed democracy" is a free media. (Provided that "free" is defined as "responsible," and the managers get to decide what is "irresponsible."