What is it like being an alumni of a school that’s underfunded or neglected? Even if the school is “good” (as in well funded or private), does the learning environment reflect that? Also, the dark side of American schools (shootings) dampens peace of mind for parents since at any given moment some gun wielding individual can storm in murdering those inside (students, teachers, custodians, etc.)
I don’t know how other school systems did things, but for me not every class every year was 100% straight out of the textbooks. Some certainly were, usually math subjects or science could be.
It’s anecdotal but I often find the “why weren’t we taught x” type of statements, I remember learning whatever thing in school. I know people will forget stuff and just say they never learned it (I mean, kids do that all the time IN school let alone a decade later) but there’s got to be bigger differences than just public vs private. (I was public)
I don’t know what though.
You may have been lucky enough to learn a few things not from the text or on a standardized test…
But the kids who do, what they learn isn’t always right, and when it is, no one else believes them.
Example:
The civil war was about states rights.
Most kids who learn that, learn it as the South was fighting for states rights.
A very very small subset learn that it was the North on the side of states rights, because the South wanted to force northern free states to deport all Black citizens to the South so they could be enslaved.
The northern states refused because they had outlawed slavery.
The southern states wanted Lincoln to do it with the Fed.
Lincoln said he would try to outlaw it in the South, or force Free states to comply.
And that refusal is why the South started the war.
But even when it type the whole thing out, someone will eventually chime in to say “it was slavery” which is reductionist and 200+ year old propaganda that still makes it into our text books to frame the Fed and North as the aggressors. When the South started it to force slavery on the whole country.
Just like trump is using ICE in blue states, we literally fought and won a civil war over if he could be doing this