I use to be pretty libertarian about this; but the sad truth is, most people are just too damn irresponsible to provide k-12 for their kids.
So? Would the world be worse off?
I think that formal education in the form of government education, is a bad thing, so I think the less of it children get, the better off they will be.
All those little angels who are being forced to go to high school don't learn CRAP unless they want to. If they wanted to, they would learn anyway. I'm fairly smart, but I would never give formal education the credit. There is no doubt that I would be stupider than I am, if I had to waste entire years of my young life attending schools like my peers.
VOLUNTARY education provided for people who WANT to be there and who will be kicked out if they are disruptive (actually they wouldn't need kicked out; they wouldn't be there in the first place if they didn't want to) would be superior for those who actually want to learn.
You don't have to believe me. It's pretty clear that as a nation, our 'educated' children graduate as idiots.
Take the actual amount of retained knowledge gained from highschool, and you could probably teach it in a short summer class, to someone who actually wants to learn it. For the amount of actual knowledge kids absorb, it's such a colossal waste of resources.
Thinking that our nation will magically be better off if we force everyone to send their children to (an arbitrary amount of) (government-run) (so-called) education is wrong-thinking. It's a cargo-cult effort.
Would it be ok for us to mandate that (for example) ADULTS attend (an arbitrary amount of) (government-run) (so-called) education from say age 30 to 35? Is it ok for the government to mandate that? Why not? Don't you want people to be smart? If it's not mandatory, people might decide their time is better spent on something else!!!!!11
A person's teenage years could be better spent in an apprenticeship, in productive voluntary education, or working than wasted in boring classrooms, burning millions of gallons of diesel riding around in buses, under the thumb of government authority, being probed by school administrators, contracting and spreading STDs in the taxpayer-funded, pseudo-prison environment of public education.
But the idea of (gasp)
children actually being productive and free, and parents being free to raise them as they see fit, is too far against the cultural tide to be considered.