You can say no to college. Why not say no to school?

There's a really interesting article in The Lighter Side Blog. It's called Students paid $100,000 not to go to College.
It reports that Peter Thiel, PayPal's co-founder, is paying 24 college-aged students $100,000 to just say not to college.
Why?
The article reads, "Thiel has made no secret of his opposition to higher education, calling it the next bubble and criticizing the often-crushing cost of study".
"A true bubble is when something is overvalued and intensely believed," Thiel told TechCrunch earlier this year. "Education may be the only thing people still believe in in the United States. To question education is really dangerous. It is the absolute taboo. It's like telling the world there's no Santa Claus."

 We have seen this with the reaction we get to unschooling- mass protest and ridicule! I find it really ironic then to read the comments that follow the article. Many of the comments are sympathetic to the idea that you can learn more in the real world and by experience than in college.

But I can't helping wondering how many of these people would extend this thinking to include children? By this I mean allowing children to learn by experience-naturally and IN the world, rather than in schools with schools' institutionalized, "one size fits all' type of education?