Thanks for sharing your opinion on obligated schooling. I have been trained to be a Waldorf primary school teacher, but I am currently not doing that work and haven't been for some time. I think that with the way we've been educated in the west, we don't realise that we do actually learn to think critically, or at least are given the basics to start doing so. Of course there are so many different kinds of schools, but I for example have been taught to carry my own responsibility and to not jump in the pond when another does, BECAUSE I have been educated and my parents have been too. Not all that we have been taught was useful of course as the education system is a reflection of the general ideas of the ruling society. But when I look at uneducated people in India where I have been for quite some time, they are really lacking many cerebral skills to take care of themselves properly . There is much less vital information available to you when you can't read for example. You can't see what's in the food you buy, you have no clue about a lot of the artificial ingredients for example. You don't know your rights when somebody mistreats you. Emotionally you don't have the awareness that you are not automatically in charge to fulfil other peoples needs, nor are they responsible for yours. You haven't learned time management or basic hygiene. Sometimes not even left and right. You didn't learn to categorize as you never made any puzzles. As a result your organisational skills are very chaotic. Nothing has a logical place in the cupboard. All things that are so normal to us, but not to them. Because you haven't learned to use your brain in a certain way.
So when comparing, I do feel I was lucky that I was made to go to school. It wasn't perfect. I have a memory of a lot of stale hours in school and in our stale society in general from when I was younger and wasn't aware of how things worked and what I wanted, but I did get the start up tools from school to try and find that out by reading and trying things out.
I think there should be a very basic minimum of skills that each child will have to learn like reading, writing and math, with the least of indoctrination woven in to that and the rest of the things there should be a minimum amount that is also obligated, of things a child can choose from what it wants to learn. I think much less schooling is necessary and more learning from life itself. Less hours a day and also not all year around. But a minimum of obligation I think is necessary. If school was no longer obligated I fear many parents would let the child have less fruitful experiences in the amount of time that should be reserved for learning and socialising with other children. I think homeschooling/unschooling should be allowed, but I don't think you can trust just any parent to be able to conduct that in a fruitful way, so there should be check ups for that too. And a minimal amount of social time spent with other children I think is also very important and something homeschooled children sometimes miss out on. This should be a part of every childs day.
It's not that I trust the state checking up on people more with the education of children in their hands then I would parents with the education of their own children, but I do feel it is important to have at leat others look in to the homeschooling situation from time to time as when it's parents alone controlling everything this can be like still water, not enough fresh water flow comes in, especially when the parents don't have many skills of reflecting up on what they do. I'd like to think that we can hold each other up when we work together. We can stimulate and evaluate. I've been homeschooling some children for some time and boy did I wish for some inter-vision/ inter-colleague exchange of view points and evaluation at some point.