Originally posted by Aristotle
Honestly, if this is your attitude to raising children, please never have any.

The point of public schools is not to "free up parents to work." That's utterly repulsive.

The ideal situation is at least one parent (mom or dad) home to take care of the kids whenever they need it.

The current warped situation is an utter disgrace.

Raising kids is more important than work. If you don't believe that, don't have kids.

Obviously, people get in situations where they simply don't have options. Single parents have to work. Sometimes two parents both have to work. That doesn't mean that is the ideal situation. It sure as hell is not the reason for public education.
Original Schools

These were communal affairs where one person educated many. Many people put in efforts to make the school, but the bottom line is one teacher teaching all let the folks get back to work on their farms and businesses. The whole idea is to pool resources so that the education works out better than what would have been possible for the people at the time to do alone.

I am still having a hard time finding the right tone here, obviously. I never meant to imply there was anything wrong with home schooling, and to the best of my knowledge I did not imply anything of the sort. I rather specifically said it was to free them up for work AND give the child a better education than they could have provided given the time they had available to educate them themselves, assuming the parents even were all that literate to begin with.

The modern school is not that much different in its ultimate purpose.

In any case, the original subject was that you were saying that one on one education by ones parent is economically cheaper, and I am pointing out that there are almost no cases where that turns out to be true if you take the real cost of lost labor into acount.

Finally, I have said repeatedly that I support home schooling for those who can afford it.