I'm surprised no one has mentioned Bryan Caplan's The Case Against Education yet, which basically argues for a revolution in the other direction - get rid of almost all schooling because almost none of it passes a sane cost benefit analysis. It's very well researched, and the author has a long track record of being happy when he moves people even marginally towards his views.
The praise here for Direct Instruction is akin in many ways to a lot of the research Caplan draws on, especially his findings that generally, most work related knowledge is built at work, by actually performing the job.
https://www.amazon.com/Case-against-Education-System-Waste/d...
I cannot imagine coming to a place that has a reputation of having higher educated people, and presenting that education is a waste of time. All research has some levels of agenda behind it, and it would be very easy to steer anything the author presents into a direction he wishes. On the contrary, literally every country on earth benefited greatly from education and the results are very visible in all aspects of human development (HDI, GDP, pollution, literacy, etc...), most recently China, and even more recently India. Both had huge numbers of illiterate people, compared to both advancing at an incredible pace when a large emphasis was put on education.
My reading of it is not that Bryan thinks education (aka learning) is a waste of time, but that much of what we call 'education' in the US, particularly with respect to higher education (4 year colleges) is just signaling. Very little is being learned. It's just a very expensive and time-consuming way to sort people based on skills and attributes they already had.
Of course, the above paragraph isn't perfectly accurate. It's based on my impression of a book I read a couple of years ago, polluted with my own biases, other things I've read on the topic etc.
I strongly disagree (having not read the book and having my own biases). History teaches us that any education is better than no education. Formal education is very far from just booklernin', you also learn *how to learn*, you develop social skills, you network, you start understanding how to deal with administration stuff, how to deal with failures and many other skills...
No country has perfect education, but what we call education is very useful for becoming a society participating human.
Many people graduate from US high schools without being able to read. Many people graduate from US universities without significant skills in the areas you mention.
I highly recommend reading the book, even if you expect to disagree with every fact, statistic, opinion and conclusion.
The problem with any such statement is framing and agenda. I agree with the premise that education has a long way to go to be universally good. But compared to undeveloped rural areas where people don't have access to education? Is it better? Everything points to an unequivocal yes.
I personally avoid giving money to people who are easily obviously having a net negative effect on society.
> long track record of being happy when he moves people even marginally towards his views
Most cranks are.
Caplan is a radical libertarian bent on annihilating what few functioning social institutions we have left.