Comment by pempem

While I appreciate the author's perspective, esp as someone who experienced homeschooling, I think here in the US we often forget what these efforts have cost, their real value and who is lobbying against them.

Universal education, for all children in a nation, is an incredibly recent thing. Its also essential for real participation in a democracy which requires, at minimum, an understanding of the governing body and at maximum whatever we're slogging through now. Could the curriculum be better? Definitely. You know who is stopping that? Shit politicians. We need better ones because no matter what you think, they aren't going away,

Education has also continuously and purposefully been underfunded and politicized by the political right and intermittently eviscerated by corrupt players on the left and right. This is on purpose. The rise of homeschooling is directly correlated with how much funding public schools have lost, the lack of safety and how difficult it is to operate successfully. You now send the kid to school and get cut with a thousand small asks for cash when we could just revise how taxes are collected and distributed. Put out a gun ban. We don't need metal detectors, and cops and clear backpacks and active shooter drills and teacher trainings and and and. We need LESS GUNS and most americans agree but private industry is limiting us.

The rise of homeschooling is correlated with how many people are concerned about the politicization of schools, their libraries, their teachers, their cirruculum.

We keep having presidents who appoint leaders to the department of education who do not believe in education being available for all citizens. Schools continue to expand their mission to feeding kids who can't be fed. To programs for kids who can't be home. No one seems as focused on fixing why there are so many hungry kids instead focusing on a 'lunch account' and the debt of middle schoolers.

This is all intensely documented and yet another example of cutting a public good. A public good by the way, that made America a place that everyone in the world wanted to go. Yes, I got picked on in school and was bored in my classroom. Yes it could have been better. This though, this is a concerted effort to get us to divest once again, just like we are from net neutrality, the post office, the EEOC etc.