20th Century Public Schools

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, of Instapundit fame, writes for the New York Post about 21st century changes in the schooling of our children:

Parents are pulling their kids out of many large urban districts in favor of private, on-line and charter schools. This is causing financial problems as the lower enrollments lead to teacher layoffs and general shrinkage.

Why are the parents pulling their kids? Because they think the public schools aren’t as good as the alternatives.

Reynolds also explains how "teenagers" came to exist, an artifact of the lockstep public schools system. In public schools age-grouped young people learned from each other instead of from the adults alongside whom they once had worked.