I agree with you completely. But school should be both a refuge and a way out, not the enemy. I taught at an impoverished district school for ten years. I always thought the worst thing we did was send the kids home in the afternoon. The school provided free breakfast and lunch for all students. There were so few families who could afford to pay for lunch we ceased making a distinction. We had good counselors and a strong staff. It was a good place to teach. But we also had little tolerance for misbehavior. There was no way a student would refuse to go to the office if sent. But that was almost twenty years ago.
--
Thanks to litigation students now know full well they can ignore the classroom teacher with impunity. At one time part of parenting was making sure your kids attended school, parents backed up the teacher with discipline at home, they provided whatever help with homework they were able, but at least seeing that it was attempted and that it was important.
--
Schools can’t function without parent cooperation. And that’s the breakdown I’m seeing in schools today. If parents, for whatever reason fail to instill the importance of education, then the system needs to step in and make it so. The only way I can see to do that is to make it something that can be lost.
--
And I do agree you about the income inequality and I’ve written about it quite a bit, but it’s getting worse, not better and our “paid off through election funding” legislators are quite happy with the way things are. Thanks for responding.
--
https://medium.com/extra-extra/the-american-dream-is-dead-778ce166755
--
--
https://medium.com/politically-speaking/what-grew-faster-than-the-national-debt-641a8d143ffd