what evidence do you have that your schools are better than nothing at all?
“Nothing at all” doesn’t happen any more in the Western countries. Education is legally mandatory and if you don’t go to a normal school you have to have some alternate acceptable form of education (e.g. homeschooling). The zero-intervention control group that you desire does not exist in real life.
In the third world you can find large enough groups of kids who don’t go to any schools, but good luck trying to disentangle the effect of that from the general economic/status/IQ factors. Kids who don’t go to school generally don’t go because they can’t and that makes for huge selection bias.
Education is legally mandatory and if you don’t go to a normal school you have to have some alternate acceptable form of education (e.g. homeschooling).
Worse than that, homeschooling is almost entirely exclusive to the Anglosphere. It is illegal in almost all other countries.
[Edit] A quick browse through the list, it seems that western europe has homeschooling with very strong restrictions, while Eastern european nations have it banned totally. Exceptions in eastern europe include Russia (post-1992) and Ukraine.
Well in Germany it was banned by the Nazis who wanted to make sure all kids were exposed to their propaganda, and the law in question has never been repealed.
That’s not the same thing as banning homeschooling. For example, the US had mandatory schooling, but that requirement can be satisfied by homeschooling.
“Mandatory school attendance” in Germany means exactly that though. The legals concepts are Bildungspflicht or Unterrichtspflicht in Austria (mandatory education) which can be satisfied by homeschooling, while Schulpflicht (mandatory school attendance) prescribes visiting an actual school.
“Nothing at all” doesn’t happen any more in the Western countries. Education is legally mandatory and if you don’t go to a normal school you have to have some alternate acceptable form of education (e.g. homeschooling). The zero-intervention control group that you desire does not exist in real life.
In the third world you can find large enough groups of kids who don’t go to any schools, but good luck trying to disentangle the effect of that from the general economic/status/IQ factors. Kids who don’t go to school generally don’t go because they can’t and that makes for huge selection bias.
Worse than that, homeschooling is almost entirely exclusive to the Anglosphere. It is illegal in almost all other countries.
That is very interesting. Why is that?
[Edit] A quick browse through the list, it seems that western europe has homeschooling with very strong restrictions, while Eastern european nations have it banned totally. Exceptions in eastern europe include Russia (post-1992) and Ukraine.
Well in Germany it was banned by the Nazis who wanted to make sure all kids were exposed to their propaganda, and the law in question has never been repealed.
Are you sure? It seems like the Weimar constitution (article 145) introduced mandatory school attendance in 1919?
That’s not the same thing as banning homeschooling. For example, the US had mandatory schooling, but that requirement can be satisfied by homeschooling.
“Mandatory school attendance” in Germany means exactly that though. The legals concepts are Bildungspflicht or Unterrichtspflicht in Austria (mandatory education) which can be satisfied by homeschooling, while Schulpflicht (mandatory school attendance) prescribes visiting an actual school.
Where did you get that “Hitler did it” from?
.
If you go to the wrong school, it’s only pretending to get educated that’s mandatory.
Even that pretence isn’t always what is required. Merely attendance to the place where education is supposed to happen.
That seems like it’s just a particularly threadbare form of pretending to me, but I suppose we’re just quibbling now.