> Schools have very little to do with teaching, and really are just about baby sitting and trying to correct social issues.

Is that wrong? The government takes away your kid for 12 years, every weekday all day, they might as well solve social issues in the country even if that means, say, kids are 1 year behind Asian kids, or their parents 30 years ago. If they figure out how to solve personal issues, that's even better.

I think there is a logical fallacy here. People assume that the only purpose of school is education. The more the education the better, even if that means deepening social issues, or making kids unhappy (BTW being a kid is like ~20% of someones life, not insignificant in itself). I think they assume it just because 'school' is called 'school', but I don't think the name of an object should determine its purpose.

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When I look at the social issues in my country, I think the school system would be a very natural place to start to solve them (and arguably the current school system just worsens them). Even at the cost of "fall in reading and math scores".