Folks who aren’t familiar with them should take a look at McGuffey Readers sometime.
If that doesn’t drive those who don’t to home/private/parochial school, nothing will.
Those McGuffy readers, in one-room prairie schoolhouses with teachers who were not much older than the students, seemed to turn out smarter people than today, with our computers, calculators, field trips, libraries, etc. Back then many kids brought a Bible or almanac from home, which was the only book they had, to learn to read.