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John Taylor Gatto, the NY State Teacher of the Year in 2000-ish (not sure of year), wrote "Dumbing Us Down" from years teaching in some of the worst (and best) NYC classrooms, and doing wonderful things for his kids all the while.

His thesis is that the public school system is pretty much doing what it was founded to do in the 19th century: to hone down kids to be good, obedient, unthinking factory workers and military, to the lowest common denominator.

His "Underground History of American Education" expands on that quite a bit.

Most definitely worth reading.

> Do you actually believe the public school system's goal is to educate children?

Absolutely. It doesn't work out perfect every time in every place, but it does a pretty amazing job of that given the poor level of funding and constant bashing from the entitled anti-union right. Freeing up parents is a wonderful side effect that has worked out pretty well for contemporary society.

If you're surprised that kids going through puberty are engaging in sexual activity, you must be living under a rock.

> given the poor level of funding

Do you have a source for this? According to an OECD study I found, the US spends among the most in the world per pupil on education.

https://data.oecd.org/eduresource/education-spending.htm http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2015/apr/21/jeb...

From your link:

> Traditionally the United States spends big parts of its educational budget on non-instructional items such as security -- more so than some other nations.

Whenever I read about the US I'm absolutely terrified

That quote is really without context. When I look at the "security" of the schools my children have been enrolled in, I see minimal security. Facilities security isn't like a prison by any stretch, and the cost can't be that high. The dominant cost factor for education is labor costs, not equipment/facilities costs.

And the "--more than some other nations." tag is just poor journalism without added context. I'm sure that the US spends more money on metal detectors than a lot of the small countries in the world. But that doesn't tell us anything useful.

> Do you actually believe the public school system's goal is to educate children? More like freeing up parents to go to work (and tax), and employing teachers and administrators. It's nearly impossible to fire teachers, thanks to a public sector union who's got their back.

They do a shitty job of that as well. To solve that problem school should be year round, start at 8am and end after 5pm. That way a parent can have a full time job without having to take their kid to school after their job starts and picking them up before it ends.

> So, asking if something the public school system is doing is student focused betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of its purpose.

It's implementation that's flawed, not the idea. Public schools are a grand concept and can work. They just need to fix the hours, get rid of the teacher's unions (don't like it? Great, go work somewhere else!), and hire proper teachers. While you're at it replace defined benefit plans with defined contribution one's so the full costs are accounted for rather than passed on to the kids in the classroom.

Very few institutions are single-purpose. An uneducated populace is detrimental to growth, but as you note, the 'daycare effect' of schools is also a valuable benefit. Your arguments don't negate the possibility that schools are run by good actors who believe their work benefits students in the objective sense.