John Taylor Gatto wrote The Underground History of American Education, which shows his inside view of the U.S. education system based on his 30 years experience. I haven't read the book yet, only excerpts, but it seems to pretty much support my position on education in our country: our schools don't really educate anybody, and the problems cannot be fixed. Most of the smart people I know consider their time in public schools to be a waste (in terms of learning). Social benefits definitely exist, but how can you say our education system actually works when hundreds of thousands of high school graduates cannot perform enough basic math to balance their checkbooks?

After nine years of research and a half-million dollar investment, The Oxford Village Press and a tax-exempt foundation dedicated to school reform, The Odysseus Group, announce the availability of an exclusive "Author's Pre-publication Edition" of a long-awaited bombshell: The Underground History of American Education: A Schoolteacher's Intimate Investigation Into The Problem Of Modern Schooling.

The entire text is available online here. Here's a nice excerpt from the prologue:

If I demanded you give up your television to an anonymous, itinerant repairman who needed work you’d think I was crazy; if I came with a policeman who forced you to pay that repairman even after he broke your set, you would be outraged. Why are you so docile when you give up your child to a government agent called a schoolteacher?