Homeschooling

[redbeard]

Redbeard wrote:
"Fantastic point. I know a handful of parents who are pulling their kids from public school for the same reason. This might've been an issue 50-60 years ago, but there's no way it was as bad as it is now. I went to a very multi-cultural high school and it was a nightmare. So many different groups of people, forced into the same building everyday. Combine that with teenage angst and it's no wonder suicides are on the rise."

Years ago, I had a part time job I would do in the evening for a little extra coin, helping a buddy repair huge wide screen televisions. He sometimes needed an extra set of hands, and I discovered that the job was never the same, depending on where we went. The two of us repaired televisions in prisons, strip joints, multi-million dollar mansions, you name it! But the call we went on, that I recall the best, was to a local Jewish private elementary school. I could not get over how nice the facility was, the quality of the teachers and the sense of family/community. The place was not cheap, but they had a big poster about raising more funds, so a couple dozen poor Jewish kids could attend the school, despite their lack of parental funds. I looked over the bulletin board, which showed the many class trips taken, school parties enjoyed, and how active the parents were with their children's educations. The kids just seemed gentler and more civilized than what I am used to seeing at the public elementary school level. It was definitely stepping into another world.

Easy to do when you have the sheckels. Now imagine if we defunded the public schools and gave all that wasted money back to the people. It wouldn't be hard for us to replicate similar.

 

[budoslavic]

Unrelated to this thread, but this is a fantastic article written by a young college intern who spoke to a 4th grade teacher from the Midwest about "integrated curriculum".



Fourth Grade Teacher Details How Schools Push Ban History And Leftist Agendas

'The parents don't even know what's going on because it's all at school,' says a fourth grade teacher in an interview. 'The parents question very little and they just assume the teacher knows what they're doing.'

A world without textbooks or homework and where getting the wrong answer is celebrated may sound like an elementary student’s dream, but if such a fantasy becomes a reality, it would damage a generation of young minds. That is, however, exactly what is happening in many public elementary schools.

Recently, I spoke with a fourth-grade teacher from the midwest, who shared her experience witnessing the shifting of curriculum from history and science towards overt political indoctrination, all to the detriment of students’ learning. To protect this person’s privacy, she will remain nameless.

In supervising fourth grade, she teaches a little bit of everything: math, reading, language arts, social studies, and science. Recently, her school district, like many others, switched to an “integrated curriculum.” On paper, an integrated curriculum sounds like a fair idea. Students learn subjects by exploring their intersections to deepen understanding. In practice, however, the curriculum all but eradicates history while working to push politics on impressionable children.

As the teacher reports, “It says ‘integrated curriculum,’ and some of its science, and some of its social studies but it really isn’t. It’s more of a push for the progressive movement.” Indeed, it’s a movement that has fundamentally altered her curriculum. As the school district’s new curricula are online, outsiders have the ability to dictate curriculum to teachers. The result? This teacher’s science and history classes were gutted.

History Deemed Expendable

In history classes, she taught things like U.S. government, the explorers, and the Civil War from a nuanced perspective that is still accessible to her young students. She told me:

I used to do a whole unit on Abraham Lincoln, and for some reason, it’s just all of that is gone, based on an integrated curriculum. When you look at our curriculum, they’ve removed everything that was in the textbook. They say, ‘Don’t use the textbook, and you don’t need to teach that anymore.’

The kids are missing out on learning why there was a civil war in the first place. They don’t learn the true meaning of slavery and how it got resolved because it’s just disappeared from the curriculum.

The only thing I can teach in social studies was a little bit of government. There wasn’t anything anymore about the Civil War; that was completely gone. I felt bad about that.

I spoke to a friend, who’s a fifth-grade teacher, and her Revolutionary War unit was gone. She used to do a great job on the colonists of America.

Science Replaced With Propaganda

Before the integrated curriculum began, this teacher engaged her students in an array of scientific studies. In the new curriculum, however:

My last unit of teaching was just a long unit on petroleum and how bad it was. It would talk about oil spills. We’d have an experiment that kids have to mix tempera paint and oil to simulate an oil spill, so when that happened, the kids would see how awful it was on plants and animals.

In reality, these are few and far between, where we have oil spills and causing great damage. But they take something that was awful that happened back in history, we’ll take that and say, ‘This is why no one should never use oil or gas.’

They’re trying to tell the kids that you are bad if you think that you should drive a car or a school bus without it being with renewable energy. I’m teaching renewable energy in the 4th grade and feeling that is there should be a debate on it, and it should be taught both ways.

Instead, it’s video after video after video how we killed animals, how it’s bad for the environment. It’s one-sided education instead of the time for debate. That is what it’s really changed in the elementary school year. It’s a one-sided script.

Science class under this curriculum mandate is not science, but political propaganda. Students have lost out on foundational skills that would benefit them greatly in middle and high school.

They don’t give you the base level of what these little students need, and so these younger kids are not experiencing what the past children learn, which was things like: how does the machine work?

They’re not looking at the different levels of electricity. They’re not looking at anything about the water cycle. It’s all in the electronics area or it’s always on the Internet. Nothing is about reading a book and learning about following directions anymore. It goes backward.

Science is taught in a very progressive manner. No longer the kids ever going to see a textbook in schools. It’s called ’21st-century learning’ so therefore without a textbook now.

I go to the Internet to get the curriculum guide and it’s about computers and making robots work. They’re just kind of step by step guides. Instead of learning where the energy comes from, we go right to the Internet and we just build a robot, but they don’t even know what’s going on. They don’t learn how the robot works.

Teacher On How Schools Push Ban History And Leftist Agendas

'The parents don't even know what's going on because it's all at school,' says a fourth grade teacher in an interview. 'The parents question very little.'

thefederalist.com

 

[budoslavic]

^ Article continue...

Beloved Projects on the Chopping Block

In a tragic bit of irony, even the beneficial use of an integrated curriculum was taken from students. Every year, this teacher would allow each student to research a state and give a presentation and report about it.

The kids really had a great understanding of states, regions, and the economic reasons for them why you might want to grow up and go somewhere else based on temperature, based on jobs, based on the natural resources of each state…

It was so much fun doing state reports. Now, sadly to say, I’m told not to, because there’s no time for it. That it would be a waste of time. It was probably the best thing about 4th grade.

They say, ‘What are you doing, teaching states? Why are you letting the kids do a state report?’ I said, ‘It’s reading, it’s writing, it’s research.’ There is so much to learn, and now I’m not allowed to do that because of the integrated curriculum.

These state projects were not just social studies. They taught kids valuable research and communication skills. The cross-section of skills that coalesced into a beloved annual tradition is how an integrated curriculum should function. Now it’s gone, and so is the teacher’s ability to be creative in working with her students.

Throwing Out Textbooks

This teacher’s district, like many others, has not just done away with history and science, but also textbooks in general.

The frustrating part of being a teacher in elementary grades is that they have no foundational skills. The textbooks that were used went through the different states and regions, the government, Abraham Lincoln… As far as studying history, we kind of lost all of that because I was told, ‘Please discard all of your textbooks.’ That was frustrating, and I asked why over and over and over again and was told that we now have an integrated curriculum, so do not use textbooks.

Ditching all books for computers teaches students to disregard the information that can be found in books, the teacher noted. Instead, they are being taught that everything can and should be learned online. Despite this push towards the internet, the students are not taught how to evaluate online sources for accuracy.

In youth and inexperience, it can be easy to mistake a valid source of historical or scientific facts with a poor alternative. This is a recipe for ill-prepared children armed with a legion of bad facts.

Parents None the Wiser

With the removal of important foundational skills and basic subjects, one would think the school district parents would be up-in-arms about the schools’ curriculum shift. Conservative parents especially should be fighting the school’s attempted indoctrination of their children. However, they are unable to have opinions on their children’s education, because they have no idea what’s happening.

The parents don’t even know what’s going on because it’s all at school. We hardly give homework anymore, which is so frustrating. I just disagree with a lot of things, but they keep it in school so that the parents don’t have to worry. The parents question very little and they just assume the teacher knows what they’re doing.

With limited homework, parents lack a window into what is being taught to their children. Likewise, the students are losing an important aspect of early education — drilling foundational subjects, like basic math, in order to better understand in the future.

It’s Great to Get the Wrong Answer

Just like an integrated curriculum, a “growth mindset” sounds great in theory. Rather than focus on shame of past mistakes, students can use their errors to learn and grow. Yet often, the in-school application of a so-called “growth mindset” actually keeps students from learning and growing. The teacher explains:

The way of teaching is to get them to get the answer first, and then some of the kids won’t know how they got there because they’re always in a group setting. We have to work together. We’re always talking about cooperative learning. I feel that too much cooperative learning now. We don’t have the skill base anymore.

We test them, but by the time we’ve tested them, they really have never learned anything in the first place. We know they’re at the bottom and they stay at the bottom because nobody sitting there saying, ‘Well let’s just skill and drill.’ They’ve left out all the basic skills. They left out drills.

No longer can a teacher do things like math flashcards, because that’s not acceptable. Some principals think that that would belittle the children if they see that they’re not getting their math facts fast.

We’ve changed a lot of ways that used to work in the past by saying, ‘We can’t identify the kids that are low.’ So they try to pretend that that’s why we need cooperative learning. Just give the answer. Don’t let them say the wrong answer and feel bad about it.

And then, they come up with this new math, and just say, ‘Getting the wrong answer is good because that helps your brain grow.’ So we’ve got this growth mindset, which is fine but we’re really allowing kids to get wrong answers and not be curious about how do we get to this right.

The fear of belittling or saddening students is directly keeping them from learning and thriving academically.

 

[budoslavic]

 

[ABeast]

"Messy work," eh? I guess they are worried that parents are going to get a glimpse into the sausage-making room! I hope that this wakes people up, the schools your kids are going to are not the ones you went to.

 

[Dr Mantis Toboggan]

Anyone have experience with homeschooling co-ops? Dunno if that's the right term but a group of say 4-8 families who share schooling responsibilities among one another. We have a few years before we have to make a decision, my wife and I are toying with homeschooling but wouldn't be able to do it ourselves. Alternative is Catholic school and there's a very good one in our area but could put the 8k/year to work elsewhere.

 

[budoslavic]

Anyone have experience with homeschooling co-ops? Dunno if that's the right term but a group of say 4-8 families who share schooling responsibilities among one another. We have a few years before we have to make a decision, my wife and I are toying with homeschooling but wouldn't be able to do it ourselves. Alternative is Catholic school and there's a very good one in our area but could put the 8k/year to work elsewhere.

I knew of two families that homeschooled their kids by working together. (Their children were students of a martial arts school I was affiliated with.) Both mothers rotated teaching duties and responsibilities when they homeschooled their kids in a dinky little town. This was over 20 years ago - all of the kids turned out well.

Ironically, Cernovich re-tweeted this:


Edit. For those who are looking for information on "Homeschool Organizations & Support Groups", check out this web page.

Local Homeschool Groups | TheHomeSchoolMom

Local homeschool groups including homeschool co-ops, umbrella schools, field trip groups, and more listed by state and city.

www.thehomeschoolmom.com

Edit II. An insane teacher confirmed Matthew Kay's tweets (see above screenshots several posts up).

 

[Laner]

WTF. Kids 'study the news' in school. And by study, I mean fall in line with legacy media views.

No wonder the current generation is woke and miserable.

 

[Jacob Robinson]

Have been thinking about the "socialization" argument against home schooling some more as of late.

Supposedly school is to get children ready for adult life. So how is that working out? Not the reading, writing, and arithmetic part, (or the other 3 R's: rioting, rebellion, and race-baiting) but that glorious thing called socialization? Well, how socialized are adults these days?

Anyone who works in an office these days knows how rotten the office politics are, basically everywhere. And who does not face salesmen, repairmen, etc., whose sole function in life is to try to gain one's trust just so they can royally screw them over? And what about real politics -- could it be any worse? Where did they learn that behavior?

How are office politics different from high school cliques? Is it not the queen bee or the big-man-on-campus who ends up the boss? And then hires and fires based on loyalty, keeps people around just long enough to throw them under the bus, and knows just how to suck up to the superiors. No need for an MBA, they leaned all they need to know in public school socialization as they stepped on others and threw others away to sit at the cool kid's table.

How about the bum who tries to be friends with someone just to convince them to do their homework--fabulous training for future used car salesmen, dishonest mechanics, et al. How do they sleep at night? Easy, been doing it since they were a kid. Socialization pays.

How about the lazy but clever creep who is part of a group assignment, never does much of anything, but then turns in the project personally to the teacher and awe-shucks lets it be known they were the brains behind it all. Yep, they'll shoot up the corporate ladder (at least until they can not find anything to steal, then they will come down just as fast.) Another socialization success story.

What about the kids, you know the ones, always running for student council. They want your vote, but only because they have already begun building their credentials...punching their tickets. Or worse, they think they know better than everyone else. "Vote for me! I don't care who you are. Vote for me! I am important!" This "meritocracy" people talk about is asinine, there is no merit in sight, rather it is kissing up to authority and ticket punching. Want to know a reason why adult politics are so messed up? Because they learned it as kids, it is called socialization.

In short, for many, socialization means learning how to be the predator, or how to get used to being the prey. Some of the prey commits suicide in school--socialized too much too fast, or they slowly die the rest of their life. Well, to Hell with all that. Literally, the whole wretched mess belongs in Hell.

I think kids should spend time with their peers, but good peers, and in at least slightly monitored situations. And they should be taught and warned about the people warped by socialization that they will have to deal with in life. They should be prepared to be neither predator nor prey in society, but to change society, and very few will be prepared to do so by running the socialization gauntlet.

 

[budoslavic]

Looks like "Critical Race Theory" is currently being taught to indoctrinate high school kids with social justice garbage in Las Vegas, Nevada. Below is an interesting and long thread that's worth reading.



@DrKarlynB thread contine (part 1):
===================================
Here's one where they are teaching that the traditional family is a politicized concept.

...
Here is where they are teaching high school students that anyone who is not a straight white man is oppressed in our society, and that they are seen as wrong or abnormal.

...
Here they teach the traditional family reinforces racist/homophobic prejudices, that religion is homophobic, that the wage gap is a real thing, and that the government is but a tool to keep oppressed people down. Complete with photo of a boot stomping on an oppressed person.

...
Now, here is where they start to indoctrinate their little activists (again, this is required for high school seniors to graduate).

...
They literally teach that only white people can be racist.

 

[budoslavic]

@DrKarlynB thread contine (part 2):
===================================
They teach that anyone who they consider part of an oppressed group who disagrees with this teaching that they just have internalized hatred.

...
This is where they teach that all white men are racist. Well, they probably mean all white people. They're teaching this to 17-years-olds whose brains are not fully developed. They probably have the same capacity to question this as adults in their 20s do.

...
They encourage their little activists to unlearn everything and to be a force of change!

...
This is where they teach that the government is but a tool of oppression.

 

[budoslavic]

@DrKarlynB thread contine (part 3):
===================================
This is where THE TEACHER tells the students what her oppression score is and then has them do an exercise to consider their own oppression score.

...
Here, they are teaching the kids that who they are is nothing more than their immutable characteristics

...
This is an email from THE TEACHER referring to her class as "social justice warriors"

...
@felicite34
Replying to @DrKarlynB
Which state is this?

@DrKarlynB
Nevada. Las Vegas.
...

 

[Hypno]

Anyone have experience with homeschooling co-ops? Dunno if that's the right term but a group of say 4-8 families who share schooling responsibilities among one another. We have a few years before we have to make a decision, my wife and I are toying with homeschooling but wouldn't be able to do it ourselves. Alternative is Catholic school and there's a very good one in our area but could put the 8k/year to work elsewhere.

Co-ops exist but more commonly in a different form than you suggest.

At the elementary age, you can usually find a support group for homeschoolers. Its a convenient way to share ideas, arrange playdates and other activities like field trips. We belonged to one in our area, and a second that was stronger in the next town over.

Be warned that these are very cliquish, and it took some time getting into the second group.

Next, be warned that people homeschool for lot of different reasoans, and they will be different from yours. We had one family in our Christian group who didn't want their kids going to school with Mexicans. A lot of moms who were slackers or busybodies. Several who homeschooled because their kids had learning disabiliities, which is a good reason for them but means you kid might not be on the same level as them.

My wife actually found a group of Wiccan's who had a strong, open group that had an excellent chess program. My son played chess with them, lol.

In the middle school and high school years, you might be in the same group or move to a larger group. There coop makes more sense. You have people who can specilaize and teach deeper subjects to more kidss. Its not 4-8 families but 40-80 families.

The other thing that is a challeng is finding other kids for your kid to play with. If you have 4-8 families, their kids will be all different ages. You might have a boy, they might have girls. Finding kids from familieis with compatible values that are on your kids level - age, emotional, academic - is very challenging and you'll need to pull from a large group.

Start looking for homeschool groups now. Go to homeschool conventions (trade shows). Homeschooling is really a full time gig and something you mostly do youreself, at least through 5th grade.

In the early years, homeschooling is something you definitely are capable of yourselves, although you don't realize it. The later years are a bit more challenging and is where you'll need to supplement.

Not sure why you don't think you can do this now. Is your wife working?

If the 8K is a deal breaker, then its not for you. A modestly ambitious person these days could make $20 per hour. If they work just 40 hours a week, that is $800. Over the course of a year, they could make 5 times that $8,000 tuition. Homeschooling rarely makes sense from an economic perspective. If you have 4 kids and 4 tuitions, maybe. (BTW, $8000 is on the low side for private school tuition - thats a bargain.)

To make this work, you really have to understand why you are doing it. Typically, you need to find non-economic reasons that make it worthwhile.

 

[Jessie]

We’ve been homeschooling for around 18 years. And we had a surprise baby in our mid forties, so we’ve got 13 more years to go. Co-ops are plentiful where we live, but finding the right one is trickier. Usually, if you have one that’s associated with your church, it’s going to be the best fit. The kids tend to blend more seamlessly since they’ve been together for Sunday school and park days, etc. But like the previous poster said, there are usually a lot more families than 4-8, although you can find that. 20-100 families is the norm. And really, you can set them up any way you choose. Elementary grades are super easy to teach, so co-op classes tend to be fun. Lego Club, PE, American Girl, crafting, rocket building, etc. Parents teach them and they are free or low cost. For the older grades, we hire professional teachers that we know and trust and pay them a monthly fee. There are so many different kinds of co-ops, but this style works best for us, having a large family with a wide age range.

 

[Elipe]

As long as a parent can demonstrate that their child is being educated, they should be able to homeschool them. Any argument otherwise appears unconstitutional.

Who gets to determine what "being educated" means? The whole point of homeschooling is to decouple education from government. If government gets to tell you what "being educated" means, that opens the door for people that want to define that as having made sure your kid has been molested, and you have no recourse.

The WHOLE point of homeschooling is to teach your kids, your way. Yes, there's going to be retards that turn out retard adults that can't do anything, but if you ask me, that's a price worth paying so that I can raise God-fearing, smart and hardworking children that can achieve great things.

But if government gets to step in and say, "No, you can't do that, your kid needs to have a forced sex change and chemical lobotomy." ... then that's not really helpful now, is it?

 

[Dr Mantis Toboggan]

Co-ops exist but more commonly in a different form than you suggest.

At the elementary age, you can usually find a support group for homeschoolers. Its a convenient way to share ideas, arrange playdates and other activities like field trips. We belonged to one in our area, and a second that was stronger in the next town over.

Be warned that these are very cliquish, and it took some time getting into the second group.

Next, be warned that people homeschool for lot of different reasoans, and they will be different from yours. We had one family in our Christian group who didn't want their kids going to school with Mexicans. A lot of moms who were slackers or busybodies. Several who homeschooled because their kids had learning disabiliities, which is a good reason for them but means you kid might not be on the same level as them.

My wife actually found a group of Wiccan's who had a strong, open group that had an excellent chess program. My son played chess with them, lol.

In the middle school and high school years, you might be in the same group or move to a larger group. There coop makes more sense. You have people who can specilaize and teach deeper subjects to more kidss. Its not 4-8 families but 40-80 families.

The other thing that is a challeng is finding other kids for your kid to play with. If you have 4-8 families, their kids will be all different ages. You might have a boy, they might have girls. Finding kids from familieis with compatible values that are on your kids level - age, emotional, academic - is very challenging and you'll need to pull from a large group.

Start looking for homeschool groups now. Go to homeschool conventions (trade shows). Homeschooling is really a full time gig and something you mostly do youreself, at least through 5th grade.

In the early years, homeschooling is something you definitely are capable of yourselves, although you don't realize it. The later years are a bit more challenging and is where you'll need to supplement.

Not sure why you don't think you can do this now. Is your wife working?

If the 8K is a deal breaker, then its not for you. A modestly ambitious person these days could make $20 per hour. If they work just 40 hours a week, that is $800. Over the course of a year, they could make 5 times that $8,000 tuition. Homeschooling rarely makes sense from an economic perspective. If you have 4 kids and 4 tuitions, maybe. (BTW, $8000 is on the low side for private school tuition - thats a bargain.)

To make this work, you really have to understand why you are doing it. Typically, you need to find non-economic reasons that make it worthwhile.

I make enough that we can comfortably afford the 8k but not enough that we won't notice it gone, if that makes sense (8k is roughly what the local Catholic school charges for K-5 per their website). Wife stays at home and plan is for her to go back to work once we don't have any kids at home, thing is by the time our daughter is school age we'll likely have another kid. We are also working on businesses though which she could help out with from home while helping with homeschooling and/or staying with a younger child--still would need to be part of a co-op though, my wife is very strong in a few subjects which she could help out with in a co-op but not so good on a few others like US history or math.

Like I said our daughter is still in the 1st year so we still have 3-4 years to gameplan.

 

[Hypno]

I make enough that we can comfortably afford the 8k but not enough that we won't notice it gone, if that makes sense (8k is roughly what the local Catholic school charges for K-5 per their website). Wife stays at home and plan is for her to go back to work once we don't have any kids at home, thing is by the time our daughter is school age we'll likely have another kid. We are also working on businesses though which she could help out with from home while helping with homeschooling and/or staying with a younger child--still would need to be part of a co-op though, my wife is very strong in a few subjects which she could help out with in a co-op but not so good on a few others like US history or math.

Like I said our daughter is still in the 1st year so we still have 3-4 years to gameplan.

Send your daughter to Catholic school and take an active role in her education. Take her on field trips on the weekends, sports, community service, leader ship, etc.

Send your wife back to work

 

[Hypno]

For the homeschool dads out there

 

[Hell_Is_Like_Newark]

Easy to do when you have the sheckels. Now imagine if we defunded the public schools and gave all that wasted money back to the people. It wouldn't be hard for us to replicate similar.

I pay over $20k a year into the local school system (multiple properties). The school tax is about 50% of the property taxes I pay, yet only cover about 15% of the school costs. The sales taxes, income taxes, and fees cover the rest. The amount of money that would be freed up by the end of public schools is enormous.

How much did each NJ school district spend per student? See the breakdown here

NJ school districts spent an average of $21,866 per pupil last year. Who spend more and who spent less? Look up your district here.

www.northjersey.com

 

[Jacob Robinson]

Surprised that no one has mentioned Bill Ayers in this thread. Strong ties to Obama, and probably the ghost writer of one of his "autobiographies." He was the Weather Underground terrorist who got out of jail thanks to his daddy's money. Then instead of going back to blowing up police stations and encouraging the murdering of cops, etc., he became an educational theorist. Why? To brainwash the youth into blowing up police stations and murdering cops. Why do the dirty work yourself when you can get a generation of kids to do it for you? All these Antifa and BLM mobs -- what did we think was going to come out of public schools with people like behind the scenes?

Here is a link from 7 years ago on what this domestic terrorist was contributing to public education: https://townhall.com/columnists/mar...ng-down-america-destroying-education-n1596641

My grandmother used to be a school teacher. When she went to college (back in the 1930's) a teacher went to college for 2 years. Those were the teachers who taught the scientists who manned the Manhattan project. Then it was moved to 3. Then to 4. Now they want teachers to have masters degrees. Meanwhile the amount of learning has gone down, and down, and down.

My wife's grandfather was the secretary of a bank -- no college, just a high school diploma and a correspondence course. Today that position would require an MBA. I once worked at a fabrication company that took on some plate steel work to stay busy--the mechanical engineer assigned to it could not figure out how to lay out the plant steel for fabrication (square to round transition). I offered to call up my retired grand father who only made to the 8th grade to show him how to do it, but he settled for borrowing a book that my grandfather had given to me. People who have examined high school texts from circa 1900 have remarked that it would be college, or even graduate level, work today.

As more money and such pours into public education the students learn less and less, but at least they are being brainwashed into becoming American and God hating zombies. Students back then were so patriotic, native Americans lined up with their 30-30's on their reservations to enlist to fight the Japs the day after Pearl Harbor. Now, if a hostile country waged a successful sneak attack on America, a lot of young people would cheer and ask how they could help with the next sneak attack.

Why even have public education as we know it today? If people cannot home school, then why not take the national average $11,000 per student per year thrown at radical teachers unions and instead ~10 families pick a tutor to educate their 10 students in the tutor's living room. $110,000 a year for less than 8 hours a day, during the school term only, working out of their home, would bring out some of the very best of the best--I would be tempted to do that. A class size of 10 would allow for really good, individualized, instruction. For text books, just re-print whatever they were using a hundred years ago for math, English, etc. In later grades, teach in quarters and teachers could specialize. I know of a professional chemist, and a engineer who can tutor up to differential equations, both getting close to retirement. They would be thrilled to teach young kids what they know. You would have 18 year olds ready for careers or ready for any sort of college work. And sure, some families would squander the opportunity and end up with a poorly educated student...just like today.