I think that’s a valid way of thinking about it, Molly: that it’s not the point of public education to instill a love of learning or practical life skills, but rather to teach the basics of math, science, language, etc. The rest is left up to parents. If we do end up sending Lydia to public school, I plan on working hard to make sure these other areas of education get addressed. The trouble is, in my opinion, that teaching these school subjects take up such a disproportionate amount of a child’s time. So much of a school day gets eaten up by things like transportation and crowd control. After a full day of school, I find that there’s little time or space to venture beyond these few core subjects, unless you want to rush around like crazy people.