as a former teacher myself, i'm aware of the small amount of kids that have really bad home lives, but just because some are disadvantaged doesn't mean all kids should be harmed by schooling.

A 16 year old student reluctantly admits she would rather be at school than at home.

A group of high schoolers have no finals, but come to school anyway, to see friends and to eat.

A seven year old boy shows up at school wearing a button-up shirt with only one button intact.

Another boy wears the same clothes over and over everyday to school.

A seven year old figures out how to wake up in time to catch the bus every morning while his mama sleeps in.

A seven year old girl has recurring yeast infections from suspected sexual abuse.

An eight year old girl is living in a house full of farm animals inside running rampant around the house and feces everywhere.

A seven year old confesses to her teacher that her mama's live-in boyfriend used money to entice her and rape her and was moved to a foster home and cries to the teacher about how much she misses her mom, while the teacher reminds her that she is safe in her foster home and that her mama's boyfriend still lives with her mama.

Shall I go on?

Parents aren't really the answer.

Let me take somewhat of a historical perspective on schooling. In an agrarian dominated human condition, there was only a limited need (and opportunity) for the young to be "warehoused" into a school building to learn with other same aged people. Only with the urbanization of communities, with the father going to a workplace a few miles (or so) away and no farm chores to be done all day long (and the mother left to do the chores in keeping a home), did the distinct opportunity arise to warehouse young people into a "near enough" building, with other "near enough" age people. Of course, much of this worked to the satisfaction of the people (OK – the kids usually HATE school!)involved. But changes to the school day length, the curriculum, options to put together young people of varying ages to learn the same things all went away with the takeover of "public education" by the states, Massachusetts being the first. Now, the calculation problem, as well as the innovation to provide the best, most efficient, and most advantageous arrangements were snubbed because the state took over. Add in, the compulsory nature of so many things the state operates with, and "schooling" became a top down, goals of the bureaucracy dominated system. Gone was the need for families who were no longer running a farm, or the different needs for developmentally different young people from the equation of a market phenomena (aren't they ALL market phenomena?)demand, i.e. education. Gone would be the flexibility for changing needs due to changing technology and societal inter-relationships, whether enterprising or personal tastes, to be satisfied. Only the top-down "engineers of society" demands be satisfied. This "new" system, accompanied by the "democracy" of local school boards, parent-teacher groups, local "voting" on school budgets and the like, is the typical ploy to pacify and make docile, the dissent amongst the "citizenry", to the top down system designed to satisfy the engineers of society.

Of course, this "schooling" problem exemplifies the "snowball" effect better than just about any other state run and coerced institution, as it could now be used to indoctrinate the young, impressionable "school age" people into supporting the system in place, virtually stifling any consistent or mass challenges to this now, nearly "bedrocked" into place "schooling system".

As I see it, the only answer, which can possibly satisfy the demands of those who care for young people (usually the parents or other relatives – sometimes close friends) is to completely free up education from the one model (which has a limited amount of variation options) "system" in place today, from state control.