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Can We Just Admit Public Education Is Largely Considered Day Care?

It would be an easier narrative to stomach.

Ted Bauer
4 min readOct 5, 2023

In reality, public education exists to prop up the housing market, I.e. “I need to get into this neighborhood for my kids,” and as we saw during COVID, it’s fundamentally a place of day care for two-income families (or one-income families), with an element of providing meals. At this point, I am not sure it is much more than that. I have a limited understanding of public education, as I don’t have kids of my own, but I was a Teach for America (read: potential white savior) teacher for a few years about 18 years ago.

I also realize that we ideologized all the socially-relevant jobs of late, including teachers:

Now look at this Jessica Grose column:

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Ted Bauer
Ted Bauer

Written by Ted Bauer

I write about a lot of different topics, from work to masculinity to relationships and social dynamics, I.e. modern friendship. Pleasure to be here.

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