1. Americans love the IDEA of themselves being a rural/small town people, even if they are not. They love their western/pioneer heritage, even if they are removed from that life by a good 100+ years and have only Hollywoodized ideas of what it was like. And they really love the idea of themselves as independent and self-reliant (even though they never were, and have become much less so with time) which is why LHotP and the entire western genre continue to be so popular.
Yes, and the libertarians are kidding themselves. We have never been less self-reliant and more dependent on each other than now. Not many of us tan our own hides, sew our clothes, or make our own butter. We count on networks of people to provide us with heat and light for our homes, and for that matter, to build our homes.
We also count on large networks of people to treat our illnesses. My grandmother said that when she was a child, every year that she went to elementary school she wondered which of her classmates would die that school year. One year it was her brother. Having people of all ages die unexpectedly was not a rare tragic occurrence, it was a way of life. My grandmother made the world's best home-bottled jams and jellies and I still have all the great-grandparent's pickle recipes, but life then wasn't that glamourous. They may have had more simple appreciation for each day. My grandmother is the person who raised me to sit out at night and "watch the stars come out."
I didn't want to be any more guilty of hijacking the OP's thread than I already was with my comments, but it's not going back, so I'll say one more thing. In kinder gentler version, frogfactory is right and her critics are also right.
The generations from the 19th to early 20th centuries were capable of more self-reliance than we are, and death was constantly with them, but they didn't retreat into their homes and isolate their children. They built communities and took part in them. One of the first activities in any new community was a community gathering to build the school house.
Frogfactory is right: Social development and developing skills to integrate into the community is the other half of a school's mission. Her critics are also right. We don't want a country where parents lose the right, within reason, to make their own decisions about how to raise, educate, or provide for their families. When public schools behave badly, parents want to create options.
I met a group of homeschooled children and their parents and it forced me to rethink my anti-homeschooling bias. I was really impressed. These were educated people and their children were way above other children in grade levels. They were confident and socially skilled. These homeschooling parents had joined together to create social networks and sports opportunities for their kids. Trouble is, the uneducated nuts don't know that they are uneducated nuts. They think they are providing a good education for their kids too. While our ancestors weren't afraid to send their children to school in the face of death, today we have parents who are afraid to send their children to school in the face of an idea. My original point in response to the comment about home schooling was that home schooling is not the best solution specifically for treatment of school phobia past an brief initial stopgap measure because it prescribes the symptom and may make it permanent when with a little hard work, getting the child back in school may still be an option.
