The American education is a hellish mess, run by the ghastly, inefficient school board system that is too often dominated by anti-education hacks (Texas comes to mind as the preeminent example, but really, the problem is everywhere in the country). The system is so bad that Mark Twain was making jokes about it, and nothing has changed since. Could anything be worse?

Maybe. Paddy K has begun a series of articles on the Irish school system. Imagine the chaos of conflicting interests that tug our schools in different directions at every election banished…and replaced with old men in dresses committed to a common, archaic dogma that provides unity of purpose. That purpose, unfortunately, is not necessarily to produce well-educated citizens, but to produce people who will obey the Catholic church.

It could be an interesting series. We have plenty of schadenfreude to go around.