In 1995 the cultural critic Neil Postman published a book with the provocative title "The End of Education," arguing that the public school system had fundamentally failed. Others have taken up the same theme over the years. Ivan Ilyich in "De-Schooling Society" advocated the abolition of schools altogether, and H.L.Mencken, the satirical Baltimore columnist, when asked what should be done to improve public education, said: “Burn the buildings and hang the professors.” None of these proposals has been tried yet, but now we have a massive uncontrolled real-life experiment that may show whether or not there is a better way to educate children than in large bureaucratic institutions. For the moment, for millions of children, school has become home and home has become school. The transition to home schooling must be difficult. The noble idea of universal education took root in the 1850s, driven by the belief that democracy could not survive without an educated population. Now, as so often