The first time I was exposed to this idea was from a Logics Professor in College. Though I was in my 30s when I took this course, I found that I agreed with him because of my own experience growing up mostly in public schools.
He was saying that from a public governmental, and law enforcement point of view, public schools were actually less about education and more about babysitting and keeping kids from harming each other or themselves than any other single thing in the way that government in general views this. This is not what they tell the public because the public would be outraged at this. But this is what governmental and police insiders have actually thought public schools have been at least since the 1950s and 1960s.
I personally find this as being very unfortunate. Here in California we have really excellent (up until now) colleges and Universities that are the talk of the world. And High School Graduates from all over the world compete to attend our colleges and universities here.
However, like most places in the U.S. our public school system is a mess and has been since the 1950s or before. Many of my good friends who entered college at 18 and became teachers in their twenties did not last long as public school teachers. They all told me that everything creative that they wanted to help the children they taught with was denied by people in the schools in which they taught. So I watched as one by one all but the most cynical leave the public school system and begin teaching in private schools or Charter Schools so they could teach in the way that they wanted to to actually benefit the children in real long last ways. They were completely unable to teach in a useful way in public Schools because of the unions, the traditions and the hierarchy and the bureaucracies they encountered. So most of them later told me that, "Yes. Public Schools are dinosaurs and function mostly as babysitting services and public reformatories" When they agreed with me they were sad and told me their stories one by one. I had only one friend who was dedicated enough to try to function within the public school system. He had a bachelor's degree in teaching and a master's in psychology. He had been raised rich and had been a conscientious objector during the Viet Nam War. So, he dedicated his life to teaching underprivileged kids in Junior high and High School and did until he passed on in 2006. He was my very oldest friend from 1954 when I was 6 years old.
So, if you want your kids educated in a way that they will do well in the world I would recommend you home school your kids until ages 10 to 14, then I would put them in a charter school and expose them to all the most intelligent speakers on all subjects that you can. Also, listen to what they are interested in and let them study whatever they are interested in. For example, my son born in 1974 had trouble learning to read but hadn't been diagnosed with dyslexia yet. So, since we were home schooling him from ages 5 to 10 years of age we let him learn to read with his dungeon and dragons books. He taught himself to read because he was INTERESTED in what was said below all the pictures. This led to being interested in computers and he could build a computer from scratch by age 15. Though he had trouble in College with English because of transposing words he would get As in everything to do with computers, programming languages and science so he became a computer tech at first in his life. Later when he married his wife wanted to become a nurse, and he and she watched many of their friends and relatives die and so he decided to become a nurse so he could "fix people rather than computers" so, he went back to college at age 29. Recently, he became a nurse and is remarried now to another girl who just became a nurse.
IF you just let your kids study and learn about what they are interested in you will find that they learn to read and write learning about what they care about. For example, at 29 my son found out he had an IQ of 150 which is close to a genius level. Finding this out changed his whole life because it gave him the confidence to not only become a nurse but to graduate with honor, many honors and to win his class award for Perseverance.
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