Thanks a ton. That is very helpful. I think I understand your point now. (Others in the comments have also said something similar, but I didn’t grasp it until now.)
Let me try to work through it in my own words and apply your insight to my question:
Education contributes to people’s abilities — at least, that’s the idea. It also certifies them. Ability is roughly Gaussian, so tests and teaching should assume that. Which they currently do.
Results, however, depend on many other (possibly overlapping) things, such as
Thanks for the insightful comment. I agree that the performance measures used tend toward zero-sum games. I don’t, however, think that research is an example of a (roughly) zero-sum game. Scientific breakthroughs to be made is not a limited resource in anywhere near the same sense as sports trophies is a limited resource. When we’re counting papers, we’re getting closer to zero-sum, but I still think it’s significantly positive-sum.
Leaving that aside, I still think we need more examples from positive-sum games. We could look at things like
Maybe zero-sum was not the right expression, because I think it is broader than strictly zero-sum games. I meant winner-takes-most situations, where the reward of the best performer is outsized with respect to the reward of the next-best. This does not necessarily mean that the game is strictly zero-sum. In many cases, it is just that the product you deliver is scalable, so everyone will just want the best product (of course, preferences may mean that the ranking is not the same for everyone).
I am also convinced that all the things you mentioned have...
Public, large-scale, youth education is mostly about child-care and socialization, and only incidentally about skill or knowledge development.
I agree that child-care and socialization are big parts of it, but I also think skill and knowledge development play a big role. For example, I care about my doctor’s education due to the skill and knowledge development (as well as certification) that happened during their formal education.
People such as voters and parents also care at least to some degree what people learn in school. They might be mistaken a lot of the time, but they do care.
Regulation is probably the main reason. See, for example, https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/nuclear/regulations-hurt-economics-nuclear-power/.