Well that doesn't sound like a good idea.

Scarecow

What if children were raised completely by the government? I know this sounds like a reeducation camp, but just bear with me.

Imagine this: From birth, children are taken to this daycare+school+apartment+prison complex to learn life skills such as trigonometry. This is already what the public school system does to a lesser extent, but there are three main differences here.

Difference 1: Parents lose all contact with their children.
Difference 2: Across the country, these schools are all constructed exactly the same.
Difference 3: Kids are not allowed to leave until they graduate.

PRO 1: My proposal would reduce inequity.
In America, education has always been about getting your child ahead early. Rich parents can afford to get their kids a leg up, and poor parents can't. But under my system, all children would begin life with the same resources, regardless of how much money their parents have.

PRO 2: My proposal would prevent messy family dynamics.
Most people's parents are absolutely stellar, but no parent is perfect. All parents make mistakes, and some mistakes can really fuck a child up. My proposal would ensure that those types of mistakes don't happen.

PRO 3: My proposal would lower the high school dropout rate.
Schools don't do a good enough job at forcing kids to learn. Under my system, it would be illegal to drop out, and refusing to learn would be a punishable crime.

PRO 4: My proposal would allow parents to stay in the workforce.
Raising children takes time. That's time that could be spent working. My proposal would increase economic output. Plus, there would be new job openings for people to work at these institutions.

CON 1: My proposal would increase taxes.
Think of the massive costs required to run these facilities. Yeah.

CON 2: My proposal would ruin the human connection.
Numerous studies have shown that a healthy mother-child connection is quite important for early cognitive development.

CON 3: My proposal might give the government too much power.
It's brainwashing made easy. With no outside connections, kids in these institutions would be incredibly susceptible to propaganda.

CON 4: My proposal leaves no room for learning differences.
All schools are different, and this can be seen as a good thing because some children have certain learning disabilities.

BC

↪Scarecow

Did you intend to omit a negative vote?

Why do you think that the ordinary people who compose any government would be better than parents at designing and operating the schools that you are proposing?

refusing to learn would be a punishable crime — Scarecow

How can you tell whether someone is REFUSING to learn, or merely does not understand the lesson?

Schools don't do a good enough job at forcing kids to learn. — Scarecow

Schools are definitely not doing a good enough job, but FORCING people to learn something is difficult. You can lock up scholars in the little red school, but you can't make them learn grammar, spelling, reading, arithmetic, social skills, or trigonometry (which, by the way, is not a general life skill).

It's brainwashing made easy. — Scarecow

No need for your regime. Mass media has already figured out how to make brainwashing easy.

With no outside connections, kids in these institutions would be incredibly susceptible to propaganda. — Scarecow

On the other hand, a lot of propaganda comes from outside connections.

My proposal would prevent messy family dynamics. — Scarecow

It would not! Human dynamics are, by nature, messy.

Hey, I'm all in favor of education reform, and when I look at the chaotic conditions of some communities and the dismal results from some schools, a draconian regime like yours has a certain appeal.

Back in the late 1960s I worked at a Job Corps for 18-21 year old boys. We were located in a rural area. The 100 or so corpsmen lived on the "base" and spent half their time in education and half in the work-skills program. Leaving the place was difficult because we were kind of isolated and the corpsmen didn't have much (if any) money. We fed, housed, educated, and trained them. The successful ones moved from functional or absolute literacy to 6th or 7th grade reading levels in a year. The time limit on being in the corps was about 18 months.

Having control over these adolescent education-system failures enabled us to accomplish some educational goals. But the motivation to learn much of anything was missing from some corpsmen. Why? These were not children of privilege. They were children of deprivation and disadvantage. Academic (or any other kind of) success story wasn't part of their life-experience.

fishfry

From birth, children are taken to this daycare+school+apartment+prison complex to learn life skills such as trigonometry. — Scarecow

If only. It's the gender theory taught to five year olds that worries people about the government schools these days.

Outlander

CON 2: My proposal would ruin the human connection.
Numerous studies have shown that a healthy mother-child connection is quite important for early cognitive development. — Scarecow

Not necessarily. Surely you don't mean to imply a non-biological mother and child who did not know otherwise would not bond or somehow almost supernaturally bond to a lesser degree?

You could easily establish a human connection with caring individuals, ideally those who cannot bear or otherwise have children themselves and consider said work their life calling, for example. Religious based groups already do basically everything in your OP. (with mixed success, of course)

Sorry just had to point that out.

unenlightened

What if we stopped trying to "bring up" children to our high level, and instead tried to bring ourselves up to their high level?
What if we treated children like high ambassadors and dignitaries from a foreign land, who were ignorant of our barbaric and primitive customs and language, but had their own, that we might learn something of if we were not so condescending to their apparent smallness and frailty? What if we had all, from an early age, been treated with generosity and respect?

Well that doesn't sound like a good idea.

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