than its average contribution to other districts; and the City's, at about $4000, was likewise lower than the average local contribution in other districts. II. The Standard In CFE we equated a sound basic education with "the basic literacy, calculating, and verbal skills necessary to enable children to eventually function productively as civic participants capable of voting and serving on a jury" (86 2 at 316). We thus indicated that a sound basic education conveys not merely skills, but skills fashioned to meet a practical goal: meaningful civic participation in contemporary society. This purposive orientation for schooling has been at the core of the Education Article since its enactment in 1894. As the Committee on Education reported at the time, the "public problems confronting the rising generation will demand accurate knowledge and the highest development of reasoning power more than ever before * * *" (4 Revised Record of Constitutional Convention of 1894, at 118). In keeping with this core constitutional purpose and our direction further to develop the template, the trial court took evidence on what the "rising generation" needs in order to function productively as civic participants, concluding that this preparation should be measured with reference to the demands of modern society and include some preparation for employment (187 Misc 2d at 16). The Appellate Division also recognized that our "term 'function productively' does imply employment" (295 2 at 8), and we agree with both parties and both lower courts that an employment component was implicit in the standard we outlined in CFE. Nevertheless, the parties dispute the nature of the employment -- and of civic participation generally -- for which a sound basic education should prepare children, as well as the nature of the instruction necessary to achieve such preparation. We address each of these areas of dispute in turn. First, as to employment, the Appellate Division concluded that the trial court "went too far" in construing the ability to "function productively" as the ability to obtain "competitive employment" or, indeed, as anything more than "the ability to get a job, and support oneself, and thereby not be a charge on the public fisc" (295 2 at 8). More is required. While a sound basic education need only prepare students to compete for jobs that enable them to support themselves, the record establishes that for this purpose a high school level education is now all but indispensable. As the trial court found from the testimony of plaintiffs' education and economics expert Dr. Harry Levin, manufacturing jobs are becoming more scarce in New York (187