The public education bureaucrats are always working on -with little success - improving the nation's public schools. But democratic socialists have known for a long time the secret of their abysmal failure : since the beginning of the American Republic the public schools have served the interests of the affluent merchant class and from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in New England have served the wealthy capitalist class now employing millions of WAGE SLAVES. For more than two centuries the WAGE SLAVES ( apart from the Black plantation slaves in the Old South ) beginning in elementary school were in a DIVISION OF LABOR based TRACKING SYSTEM. A kid asking himself " WHAT DO I WANT TO BE WHEN I GROW UP " - found himself a little later in life being PUSHED by economic fate into just where the capitalist ruling class wanted him to be. But the daydreams of youth do not die easily . And we get numerous examples of author Theodore Dreiser's " American Tragedy ". CRIME IN THE CITY is based mostly on frustrated dreams of SUCCESS . As long as the public education system makes itself a pillar of the capitalist economic system - based on mass exploitation and oppression - the public schools will turn out FAILURE AFTER FAILURE. Most of the kids who do not FALL THROUGH THE CRACKS have somehow learned to self-educate . At least the PUBLIC LIBRARIES worked for them.