[mythrwy]

There's a lot to be desired in schools (In the US at least and I assume Canada) but one thing schools do do is bring people from many different backgrounds together for long periods of time.

That in and of itself is educational for the world students will eventually enter. It creates some level of shared experience and social cohesion and underlying social reality. It's not done very well admittedly with a lot of time wasting and poor education and lowest denominator and propaganda flavor of the decade, but the principal still applies.

The thing I'm afraid of with parent and neighbors doing the socializing exclusively is reality bubbles and a fracturing of shared culture.

[thaumasiotes]

Reality bubbles are very much here already. For example, there was a fun study showing that Ivy League students who graduated from a public high school had markedly lower opinions of the ability of an average person than did Ivy League students who graduated from a private high school.

[voisin]

> one thing schools do do is bring people from many different backgrounds together for long periods of time.

As our communities become less diverse, our schools follow. At least in Canada from my experience having lived all over the place. For example, a White suburb leads to white schools, and the house value of the suburb is always roughly the same so the socioeconomic status of the students is pretty close. There’s no bussing kids from different areas around to achieve diversity targets.