[madhadron]

As usual, it depends. My time in public schools (K through 7th grade in various places in the southeast US) was a mixed bag. Newport News, VA with all the kids of engineers and naval officers? Awesome. I loved school. Most other places? Meh. Rural western Virginia? Terrible. Bullied until I finally snapped and left someone half conscious on the playground (and the football coaches watched as I handed out that beating). I was homeschooled from 8th grade until I left for college at the suggestion of the teachers in the school because they were running out of classes at the high school for me when I was in 7th grade.

I was fortunate to have parents that are extremely well educated and my homeschooling gave me an education that is simply unavailable in a school. Not many kids have sat on the back deck in the Appalachians with their father, learning how to read Virgil in Latin.

There were lots of other homeschoolers in our county who were all religious nuts. Fortunately Virginia requires you to come in and take standardized tests every couple years to see if you're at grade level if you're homeschooling, so the worst cases got corrected. The school district also proctored my AP tests for me, even though they weren't classes the school offered.

My kids are in public school. The public schools where I live are excellent and actually deal with bullying. My kids would rather not go to school, but they're not being traumatized and they're getting a good education and have lots of friends. There's a major emphasis on social-emotional learning, which turns out to be heavily correlated with later performance. Our biggest problem is in high school with parents pressure cooking their kids to try to go to places like Harvard or Yale. I do what I can to counsel the kids and get them off that path. My own kids are firmly convinced that they're going to guaranteed admission state schools, and don't have to try to build a ridiculous resume in high school.

Schools don't have to be horrible. They just have a history of being poorly run in many places.