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Well if that were the case why did the state develop schools in the first place?
Compliance. Literally, compliance.
Also, why would it be surprising if the state completely failed at achieving a stated objective? That's what normally happens.
But look how many people can read across the economic spectrum.
That alone is worth something?
It's a false attribution. People could read before government school and homeschooled kids read better on average than government school students.
Yeah I would need to do more reading and research to present my position better.
I am taking a mass blanket approach to this topic. Thinking about the agrarian world we emerged from and how many kids were learning to read at that time.
Compared to today when kids aren’t working the farms but in public schools no matter how bad it is are still getting some level of education.
The best comparison point I've heard, and you're right that it's hard to find a great one, is industrial era England.
They were post-agrarian but pre-government schooling and had very high literacy rates, plus it's the most similar culture to ours.
The evidence on what government schools accomplish is truly bleak. I meant it when I said there's no evidence of meaningful learning, in aggregate. All of the gains to education appear to occur at graduation, which means either all learning occurs in that final day of class or government school purely functions as a filtering device.
It’s like giving the government credit for natural human behavior of learning.
Hmm
Yes, exactly. We're very curious creatures and learn lots of stuff naturally.
There's also the possible element of what is learned in government school, that wouldn't otherwise be learned, is not valuable. That would still be compatible with time in school having no impact on later life outcomes.
You're presenting a false choice. There's no reason homeschooled kids can't spend time with their peers and they often do.
Sure, but parents don't select a random subset of peers like school does. Do you think the presumably wealthy parents of homeschooled children will make sure their kids are interacting with poor families? Because those aren't going to be at the private extracurricular clubs.
It really isn't. There's no evidence of actual human capital development in government schools and trust me that researchers are trying to find that there is. Smart motivated kids learn stuff on their own and schools take credit for it.