The dirty little secret is that parents are their children’s first and primary teachers.
I would add that they are the child's **only** teachers. Yes, they may enlist help from paid and unpaid tutors and the child ( himself) but ultimately it is in the home and outside the classroom where the real education happens.
I came to this conclusion when I noticed that academically successful homeschoolers and institutionalized children spent the same amount of time in formal study, at the kitchen table, **in the home**. Academically successful institutionally schooled children were telling me that they were spending up to 3 or more hours a day doing homework in the home! Well!....Gee!....At most, my homeschoolers spent up to 2 hours in formal study in the home.
My conclusion: The real learning and teaching is happening outside of school in the home, in study clubs, private or paid tutoring, or by the child educating himself by doing independent reading, homework, and home assignments.
Sadly, taxpayers may be spending up to $30,000/year/child to institutionalize a child in a government school and it is unknown where the learning takes place ( outside or inside the classroom) and who is doing the really hard work of teaching ( parents, tutors, or the child himself). These studies have **never** been done.
The parents are usually victims of the same failed school systems.....dumber than rocks....If they are both there which is highly unlikely.