The education in the form of literacy is not incidental, it is most the entire point. Imagine how US Capitalism would function with a 10% literacy rate?

Without Public education or something similar to replace it is unlikely that we would have the high levels of literacy to which we are accustomed. Public Education successfully teaches most of the population to read and write English (including the children of immigrants whose parents may not speak English). This is a historically impressive feat.

1000 years ago the world literacy rate was less than 1%, 100 years ago the world literacy rate was less than 10%. Now it is roughly 80%!

It is clear Public Education could do much better, but lets not confuse failing to do better with failing to do anything or its most important job.

The literacy rate cannot function as a measure of the success of public education in the US. Rather, it is a measure of how useless the US public education system is, because it accomplishes little more than maintaining a basic level of literacy for the majority of the US population.

"it is generally accepted that literacy rates in the United States were quite high before compulsory schooling was mandated starting in the 1840's."[1] See the extensive citations at the link.

[1] http://www.dailykos.com/story/2003/12/5/4379/-

>"it is generally accepted that literacy rates in the United States were quite high before compulsory schooling was mandated starting in the 1840's."

This is why I wrote "Public Education or something like it". We need education systems for literacy, however it does not to be compulsory or public if nearly everyone uses it and can afford it. It seems unlikely that these two conditions (affordable and widely used) would be met in our present society without public funding of education.

Note that in that article you link to they say that Southern Whites in the 1860s had a "56.4%" literacy rate.

But even then we are falling... My great grandmother taught school back in the 1940's-1970's, and I recall reading through one of the 5th grade English subject books from around 1950, and it was significantly more advanced than what I was seeing in an English class for high school seniors (short of AP).

So, effectively even at the subject you mention, literacy (english language communications), we are teaching less with 5 more years than we taught just over half a century ago (assuming that it hasn't improved since I left HS about 24 years ago).

I love technology... I love history.. and a lot of things.. that said, I think we're letting the core that is pure communication (reading, writing, and effectively communicating) is falling behind at the expense of being able to follow [INSERT_CELEBRITY] on [NEW_SOCIAL_MEDIA_PLATFORM].

The textbook was more advanced, but how was well was the information retained? Perhaps most fifth graders are retaining information better now with books more suited to them?

Literacy rates have increased throughout the years: https://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp

If it was replicated/repeated for the next several years, I'd imagine the retention was relatively good. Likely as good or better for most people than today.

Far fewer people in the past graduated Highschool as well. For instance only 50% of students graduated Highschool in the 1950s. As of 2008 the Highschool graduation rate is 80%.

So, why lower the bar? A "C" is a passing grade by all accounts... lowering the bar only serves to hold back those able to do better.

> I think you're mistakenly assuming the point of public school is to educate. I think it exists more so the proles have somewhere to dump their kids when they're working. The "education" happens to be incidental.

And it doesn't even do a good job at that either! Most public school start (830am) after parents leave for work and finish (3pm) well before parent's get off work to pick them or be home. Sure there are after school programs to cover it a bit but overall it's a pretty crappy schedule for a publicly funded babysitter.

It would be more honest if this mission were made explicit--to serve as a holding place for children without daytime caretakers. Then, one of its primary objectives would be to pragmatically assess which children were capable of self-care, or even full independence, before the arbitrarily designated age of graduation.

add to that: Many studies show children need more sleep and would benefit from starting later in the day.

Get your kids to bed earlier ?

I'm consistently amazed by friends/family who put their kids to bed well before 9pm (even as early as 7:30-8pm). I don't think I've been able to get to sleep before 2am or so regularly since I was very young... Even if I force myself up at 7-8am, I'm still up until 2-3am most days.

On either saturday and/or sunday I'll let myself sleep until I wake up (usually 12noon-2pm). I'm fortunate enough that my first morning meeting is 9:30, and it takes about half an hour commute. My alarm starts at 7:15, and I usually snooze until around 8... it takes me nearly an hour to get going once up, and even then, I'm usually walking in the door just as standup is starting.

I'm amazed by the early-start types, as I've tried... It only made me really tired and funny for a few days, then increasingly grumpy. At 19, I worked two jobs, first at 4:30am, and second ending around midnight... I was a really grumpy young man by the end of that month (quit one of the jobs, just couldn't keep up with both).

Then I managed to find a job doing creatives/design, and fell into programming from that. All the same, in a lot of places "office hours" have been the biggest contention in the workplace for me. I get things done, I have high quality output, and significantly so.

Have you ever gone camping for an extended time (week or two)? Real camping, where you don't have access to any screens, and filled with daytime activities (such as fishing or hiking)? If so do you still end up wanting to stay up till past midnight, and sleep till noon?

I've found that if there are no major artificial light sources, and if I've been outdoors active all day, I tend to want to fall asleep soon as its dark. And I wake up way earlier, soon as the daylight starts to hit the tent.

Yes, I have... Similar issues... Just have trouble getting to sleep.

Importantly, the same research that indicates that kids would do better starting later also indicates that they (teenagers, at least, who were also the indicated population in the study about later start benefits) will generally have trouble getting to sleep much before midnight, regardless of when you 'send' them to sleep.

I still am not one of the accursed 'morning people'.

Maybe it's natural for /you/ to get up that early, but it never was for me (the closest I came was waking up super early for reruns of Mr. Wizard, then falling back asleep).

With what? Pills?

Nah I think most people that drug their kids to sleep use liquids.

"It's time to bed, now you go to bed, lights off" ?

Give the stupid noise machines something to do. They'll have no problem going to sleep if their idea of fun is digging a hole in the back yard.

More constructively phrased: make them run around outside a bunch during the day, and don't let them use devices with screens after dark.

Works for adults, too (especially if you also reduce use of artificial lighting) though it can be a struggle to fit that into modern life—especially in the Winter, since kids don't do much running around at school these days and it's dark shortly after they get home.

Is this a joke?

I hope the "stupid noise machine" part is.

As a parent, I can state that getting lots of exercise is very useful in persuading kids to go to sleep at a reasonable hour. It's not bad for the parents, either.

woah woah woah let's be reasonable here

>>I think you're mistakenly assuming the point of public school is to educate. I think it exists more so the proles have somewhere to dump their kids when they're working. The "education" happens to be incidental.

You are absolutely correct.

The point of public school in the US has always been to 'educate' in the broader cultural sense, not in the narrow sense of learning a subject (or range of subjects) or learning how to do a particular job. From its earliest forms in the US in the early 19th century until it was widely institutionalized by the late 19th century, it was always explicitly promoted as a method of integrating into 'productive' society all the religious outsiders, immigrants, lower classes, Indians, Blacks--everyone who was not a middle-class, white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant.

This is still an explicit objective of public school, except that now it also has a normative function for the middle class--in other words, it has become the de facto normal condition of the middle class to have had a public school experience. That is why the defenders of public schools nowadays go further and claim that without having had a public school experience, a child literally has no place in adult society and is incapable of functioning normally. This is the single most common public objection to homeschooling, even more than fears of child abuse, child neglect, or educational neglect.

> That is why the defenders of public schools nowadays go further and claim that without having had a public school experience, a child literally has no place in adult society and is incapable of functioning normally.

Strawman alert.

I don't think any of the homeschool criticism revolves around this extreme argument. It's more along the lines of - in school, you have to socialize with someone other than your family, at homeschool this is neither required nor expected.

Nor are there any standards or tests in terms of socialization. Thus the stigma.

There's also the issue that if a homeschooler is trained with a large body of questionable content contradicting public understanding, these children could be reared to have their own set of "facts". Clearly this is disturbing to those who agree on other facts.

>> That is why the defenders of public schools nowadays go further and claim that without having had a public school experience, a child literally has no place in adult society and is incapable of functioning normally.

>Strawman alert. I don't think any of the homeschool criticism revolves around this extreme argument. It's more along the lines of - in school, you have to socialize with someone other than your family, at homeschool this is neither required nor expected.

You make the exact criticism that you say isn't being made.

The public school system fails in socialization in many ways, and bullying, substance abuse and school shootings are symptoms of that failure.

> You make the exact criticism that you say isn't being made.

Yes he did. I was a little shocked by that. Apparently the public school system failed him in rhetoric and logic.

This is not a 'strawman', this is the actual content of every substantive criticism I received in 12 years of homeschooling my child. Because we followed a structured curriculum and she excelled in verbal ability, they had no other basis for criticism.

Also, at the time we were homeschooling, there was literally no relevant research in the ERIC database by anti-homeschoolers--it consisted entirely of polemics about socialization.

Starting in the 18th century, public education in America was an aspect of New England communities. The stated purpose was to spread literacy for understanding of scripture and for commerce. By the 19th century, it was widely understood throughout the U.S. that literacy improved the regional economy and provided opportunity for one's children. Public education became an expected government service, and many localities' education spending dominated their budgets.

At the time, education was a drain on agricultural families, so the child care aspect wasn't a benefit. City dwellers may not have employed their children, but child care wasn't especially beneficial since household labor without running water was substantial.

The modern phenomenon of public education as childcare is only made possible by widespread employment of women with children. The issue is best discussed from this standpoint, not a false idea of what public education was originally intended to accomplish.

This highlights why compulsory public schooling was so long in being established. It follows the trajectory of the US transitioning from an agricultural economy to an industrial economy, and children were actually expected to participate in both but even more so in the agricultural economy. Only in the 20th century were people expected to not work at a 'real' job until the age of 22.

>I think you're mistakenly assuming the point of public school is to educate. I think it exists more so the proles have somewhere to dump their kids when they're working. The "education" happens to be incidental.

No one you know is a teacher? I can't speak for the US, but many of my friends went into teaching here in the UK. There is plenty wrong with education but the people I know who went into it definitely want to teach and want to teach well. This kind of blanket statement is quite disrespectful to them.

I don't see it as an indictment of the teachers, but the institution itself. I know many inspired teachers whose work ethic and selflessness can put us all to shame. There are also some pretty bad teachers. But neither point illustrates that the public education system (in the US at least) is engineered for many other concerns before considering how best to educate its students.

You can see it in this paraphrased anecdote from a middle school science teacher: The principal asks me to do a lot of things. Sometimes, he asks very sternly. However, as a teacher, there is only one thing I am legally required to do for these children every day: take attendance.

I don't think that quote means much of anything other than it's very difficult to legislate efficacy.

Suppose you had the absolute dream of a public education system -- one that existed solely to provide a real education for the children. What would the actual laws around that system look like? Is it a misdemeanor to make a D on a math test?

It also ignores that there are a wide range of well-meaning (but probably counterproductive) things we require of teachers that are for all intents and purposes legal requirements. If your kids perform too poorly on a test, your school may lose funding, for example. Again, I think that crosses the line beyond which such mandates make sense, but it's pretty clearly intended to improve the legitimate education your kids get. If it were about babysitting, they wouldn't bother.

In a vacuum, you're right, and it would be difficult to convey all the context that might sway you such that this anecdote is indicative of the structural problems in the education system. But this is just one of millions of anecdotes on how the system as a whole is largely concerned with anything but education.

The accounting machinery is needed to get money to all the schools sure, but when that accounting machinery becomes the focus of 40% of admins... You're not running an education system. You're moving money around that happens to educate...sometimes.

Whether teachers have noble motivations is completely irrelevant to whether the institutions perform their function well. All it means is that the teachers are working for institutions that take advantage of them.

You can have inspired worthy people working in the midst of a crappy institution infested with bureaucrats and sports programs that suck up most of the money that could have been used to pay teachers.

I think the education system in the US is vastly different from the UK. In the US, the teachers are massively limited in their freedom to choose how and what to teach their kids. Mostly because the No Child Left Behind Act(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Child_Left_Behind_Act), which requires teachers to teach for tests and nothing else. And this IS coming from someone who knows a teacher in the US. My uncle was an art teacher for several years, and ended up leaving because of the politics and lack of care given to students.

I'm not saying that any particular system is good or bad (and for what it's worth there are similar complaints about teaching in the UK with regards to teaching to tests).

But looking at that summary it's pretty clearly intended to improve schools. It might (or might not) be the wrong way to do it - but it's certainly about trying to give children a good education.

I understand that's the intent, but what happens is that schools lose money if too many of its students do poorly, which leads to a lowering of standards and a teaching towards tests alone to shovel as many students through the system as possible. The students can make an educated guess at a multichoice question, but lack any real understanding of the topic being taught.

The act did not assert a national achievement standard – each state developed its own standards. I think I found the problem.

Not to mention the proles.

The point of the public school system, where ever it exists, is well established: to produce a uniform workforce.