You would have always thought parially correct then, too, sir. As it turns out, public education in this country (USA) started with the "Old Diluder Satan Act" which said that kids should be taught to read the Bible so that Satan could not easily tempt them to sin and evil...

It progressed into something akin to "it's important to a democratic society to have an educated populace since they run their own government..."

There have been many iterations that basically fell within those two lines of thought (skipping the Industrial Age and the old Liberal Arts vrs. Vocational debates ;-) ), then, in this here century, it turned into a babysitting service, a form of birth control (they can't be copulating if they are sitting in high school), surrogate mom and dad (yes, we should feed these kids since their parents don't), etc...

But getting back to your original thought, education is really not about the kids - it's about society...