To illustrate his claim that schools generally do a remarkably good job of schooling while the society makes inadequate use of other means to educate young people, the author presents a case history of a young American (identified pseudonymously as "Brad") whose schooling was adequate but whose education was not. Brad, jobless and homeless, subsists on food stamps and minor theft in a cabin he built himself in the woods. His history is one of family insecurity, petty youthful wildness, and a persistent avoidance of school and routine work. Noting that Brad is at least literate despite his casual association with formal schooling, the author suggests that Brad's failure to find himself a place in mainstream society is not due to inferior schooling but to a lack of societal mechanisms providing alternative routes to socialization and enculturation for those who find the traditional forms of schooling uncomfortable or irrelevant, or even for those who can cope with schooling but not with life outside the institutional settings. (PGD)