A lot of US kids are forced to sit still whether they're in front of a screen or in a physical classroom. Typically it's better in preschool, but many kindergarteners only get 20 minutes a day to play if that. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/05/learning/do-kids-need-rec...
You should qualify that with American public education, there are lots of countries in the world that do better. In fact the country at the top of the table has pretty much banned private education.
You should consider that a lot of families in that country (Finland I assume) are moving abroad because having zero control over education of your child is not good, and schools in Helsinki might be nice, but it's not Helsinki everywhere. Even if the quality is OK, there are many kids that simply can't function in the classic subjects/tests/marks-oriented education system, and then there is bullying.
as someone from another country where homeschooling is not allowed and private education is shunned upon, let me give you the other side of the argument.
private education created a large divide between people of different social classes and it absolutely removes social cohesion. (which results in a ton of other problems).
Some kids do indeed not function in normal classrooms, but this is the reason why special needs education (i don' t know if that is the correct english term) exists.
In my opinion, homeschooling does not adequately provide child with the experience it needs to grow up, especially in regards to social skills.
As a parent, I couldn't care less about social classes - I care about my child having a joyful and loving childhood. I don't want my child to be a number in a statistic that both the teachers and classmates spit on, like I was.
In my own case, putting me in special needs education (I tried) would do much more harm than good, and would not provide in any way the good experiences alternative schooling could have (sadly that didn't work out for me too).
Some kids thrive in homeschooling, some kids thrive in special needs education, some kids thrive in small group schooling, some kids thrive in democratic schools, etc, this is not a simple normal vs special needs question, and you can't say that homeschooling does not work - it works for the right individuals, and these children don't need to have anything to do with the children that need something else (as long as we don't socialize their education, of course).
Sometimes the kind of school is right but that particular one does not work and you need to put the child in a different but alike school - often impossible in socialized systems (where school is usually assigned based on residence location).
I think it's incredibly sad that we have hard science on each child being an individual with vastly differing needs, hard science on the outsized influence of childhood on later life, and yet we force children into either normal or special needs school and suppress competition and new ideas in the name of class struggle.
I am not saying there is an exodus, of course the Finnish system is excellent for many people, and it is so good that it does a good job even when the child does not fit exactly.
However yes, there are people that were forced to move away from Finland or other countries like it because their child had problems in the standardized schools, and there were cases of people that were criminalized for their different educational preferences.
I don't think that problems of the world and the competing economical ideologies should hinder education of children. While for-profit schooling exists, a large portion of private schools are cooperatives, nonprofits, informal groups etc, and private schooling is even recognized by the EU commision as extremely important in helping non-standard people. Private schools can only help, there is no way that a school that is at least average would do harm - it's the government's fault the public schools are failing, as is clear from the many and many countries where private, public, governmental, religious and other schools coexist peacefully.
Another point to consider is the differing needs of parents (e.g. the weird school-work schedule of a mother that still works on her Ph.d. while working as a researcher while having a baby; some people want to travel while their kids are young; ...); a public school simply won't accommodate to that.
My above comment isn't even the worst thing I noticed in the last year or two before I graduated HS. (I went to a small school, with K to 12 on the same campus).
I ran tech for the big "Christmas Program", which consisted of "song and dance" (loosely speaking) from kids aged pre-K to second grade. It was fairly nice, because I got to skip class. What was less nice, was hearing a pre-K teacher yell "Why did you do that!?! Doing that is going to ruin the program for your grandparents, after they go through all the trouble to come see you.", in response to a child stumbling on a line.
Public education is necessary, but many implementations are flawed.
Rereading this, It sounds like something you'd see on r/thathappened. I wish it were fake.
Only going to recess on Fridays, if you have been good all week, that's kind of stupid and unbelievable. It's not the experience of having kids in the last 20 years, at least in the US.
I went to a K to 12 school for my last 4ish years of HS, and the kindergartners (the kids, not just teachers) were already almost mind-dead cult like in "Prep for the test!" and "Go $TEAM!".
There were a couple really good teachers across all levels of the school, but not enough.
My opinion was pretty close to yours in my late teens/twenties but as I’ve aged and become friends with teachers, my feelings have gotten more nuanced. Those teachers make very little money, receive virtually no support from parents and are more often than not treated like babysitters, not educators. Complicating matters, school divisions are so poorly funded that despite all of that, they still fund many classroom activities out of their own pockets.
I can trace many of my current skills, interests and aspirations directly to several of my teachers, most often in contexts not directly related to their core subject.
There is the occasional teacher who is there to power trip, but they are by far the minority. The school system crushes teachers just as much as it does the kids.
Edit: Reread my comment you replied to, if I made it sound like the teachers were mind-dead, that was absolutely not my goal. I just wanted to specify that the kids themselves were like that, and worried it might be misinterpreted as the school itself being like that.
No friend, there’s no fault at all. Thanks to the way you phrased it, I got to listen to a really intelligent person explain their true feelings. That meant a lot to me and honestly, I’m more embarrassed by young me!! :)
Our currently public school system was designed to produce factory workers and conscripts, no happy, healthy kids. And at the time, and given the level of resources then, that made sense.
