LONG ago, when I were but a lad, I encountered a philosophical conundrum involving the nature of education.

The class clown -- destined to work for his dad in the family market gardening business -- remained thrillingly unimpressed while a teacher attempted to convince him that he should work hard and pass his looming exams.

With magical timing, this natural entertainer created uproar when he asked: "Why would I want to know the square root of a lettuce?"

The teacher could not really tell him.

And do you know what that boy became after he left school?

No, neither do I.

Education, usually regarded as a good thing, is never out of the headlines these days. Prince Harry, the 18-year-old "spare to the throne" is apparently having to join lessons for boys in the year below him at Eton because he failed his AS level geography exam and has to take it again. We can expect that he will probably follow his older brother to university at some stage.

Although he might become a plumber in line with current government thinking which acknowledges that some of the bright young people bullied and badgered into higher education might do better for themselves (and the country) if they developed vocational skills which people need. This is a view I have heard expressed on many occasions, but it is gaining ground.

The current debate on the government's White Paper on education seems to suggest that in future many students will leave university with routine debts of £20,000 or so and be expected to pay them off at nine per cent of salary when they start earning £15,000 a year. The expectation is that all graduates will earn an extra £400,000 during their lifetime.

Oh yeah? Some will, of course, and so will some of those with entrepreneurial spirit who mess about at school to the despair of teachers/parents and then blossom into business people -- respectable or otherwise.

Many parents must be beginning to wonder if their Johnny would do better training to be an electrician rather than starting his working life with a better education soured by an enormous financial millstone. You see, old certainties about what constitutes a desirable occupation are crumbling and I rarely talk to parents who would advise their offspring to follow in their footsteps.

I know that some teachers, frustrated by pressure and bureaucracy, tell their children not to do what they have done and live their lives in sin and misery at the House of the Rising Stress.

Well, perhaps not sin.

"The job's not the same" is a widespread refrain across many of the professions and occupations which provide the glue for UK society. I suspect that there are untold numbers of doctors, nurses, policemen, local government officers and even the occasional journalist who have been known to suggest, with feeling, that anything else would be better.

Luckily, nobody believes parents.