I'm a K-12 school admin and I think the dirty secret of our profession is that there's more truth to what you're saying than we'd all like to admit. To be sure,

I'm a K-12 school admin and I think the dirty secret of our profession is that there's more truth to what you're saying than we'd all like to admit. To be sure, there are basic skills we do teach, and some kids do require interventions that school specialists can provide in a way that can meaningfully impact that child's life. But that's not the bulk of what "schooling" is. A nontrivial part of the job is simply daycare. I've had the benefit of working at very different schools in different continents, but had a control in the sense that they served very similar families. I often think about how much passion and energy were devoted to certain policies/programs/issues and how the schools land on the opposite side of them in a lot of them yet how little that seems to affect the student outcomes we observe.