Compulsory school serves multiple purposes: - Taxpayer subsidized day care so parents can go to work - Keeping teens out of the labor pool - Keeping kids and

Compulsory school serves multiple purposes: - Taxpayer subsidized day care so parents can go to work - Keeping teens out of the labor pool - Keeping kids and teens off the street causing trouble - Social and political indoctrination - Imparting some minimum level of basic education Motivated students and their parents can get a lot out of the school system, mainly admission to good universities. Schools used to provide vocational “tracks” for students not focused on university, but that fell away in the ‘70s. A lot of kids just do the time and get through it, or maybe drop out, possibly learning some useful information and skills, but too often just wasting a lot of time. You might look into Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich, John Holt’s books How Children Fail and How Children Learn, and Grace Llewellyn’s The Teenage Liberation Handbook. John Taylor Gatto, a former Teacher of the Year, wrote this great essay The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher about school: https://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html https://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html