It doesn't seem obvious to me at all that forcing kids to attend school against their will results in them becoming "educated" in any meaningful sense.
Forcing them to attend school doesn't educate them, but it does reduce the number of young people "hanging around", which probably has benefits all on its own.
I agree--especially when you're talking about forcing bad kids to attend school against their will. The bad kids in urban schools wind up not learning jack, even if they don't drop out. I know this because I've taught 12th graders in a failing urban school where the graduation rate < 50%.
Even worse, forcing bad kids to attend school against their will diminishes the quality of good kids' educations. The good kids are the ones whose powerful minds actually stand a chance of improving civilization in big ways.
Not saying I was a great, great student (I was in the top 3% of a huge public HS, but plenty of other kids were smarter than me), but if I had known how badly I was getting screwed over by taking classes with bullies/people who did not want to learn anything in school except that Jesus is God and every non-Christian is going to Hell, I would've tried to switch schools at a very young age. If I only knew then what I know now...
It does mean, hopefully, that they continue to be exposed to new information and new people and that they may, should they choose, decide to take education seriously at any point with relatively little difficulty.
Dropping out makes it much, much more difficult to return, or even to decide to return.
