The compulsory system of education is criticized on the grounds that it has become a regimented "universal trap" antithetical to democracy. In contrast to the Jeffersonian concept of education in the service of citizen initiative for the preservation of freedom, current compulsory education is a tool of industrialism and of a rigidly stratified society. The schools do not even reflect middle-class values. Their significant strengths are, in fact, petty-bourgeois. When poor youth are confined in a situation which is useless and damaging to them, they drop out, either actually or behaviorally, a response which could be termed life-preservative. The sterility of traditional education and the conformity it demands are also questioned. Possible alternatives are having no school at all for a few selected classes, conducting school work in the community rather than in the school building, using community adults as "teachers," and establishing a policy of voluntary attendance. Other suggestions include decentralizing the urban school into small units, using store-fronts as classrooms, and sending urban children to farms for a few months, thus helping perhaps to stimulate a new kind of rural life. (NH)