A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another: and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation, in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body.

On Liberty, Chapter 5. 

Unfortunately state education is, and is likely to remain, the declared policy of all major UK political parties. Is it any wonder why people are switched off by politics?