A huge amount of early schooling is little more than basic socialization, literacy, numeracy, some vocabulary, and most of all daycare. Later it ostensibly beco

A huge amount of early schooling is little more than basic socialization, literacy, numeracy, some vocabulary, and most of all daycare. Later it ostensibly becomes more focused on learning, but really it mostly just teaches people how to learn (in theory); that pretty much continues through high school, and sometimes much of university. It's a pretty ancient edifice that exists in the current form due to societal, intellectual, bureaucratic, political and corporate inertia. All of that is backed by the terror parents feel that if they "get this wrong" the child will be unable to get ahead in the world (at best) or intellectually/socially ruined (at worst). This is further exacerbated by parents who, far from appreciating just how long it takes for real learning to begin (and how much of it is always self-guided), think the key to raising bright children is Mandarin in infancy.