[aspasia]

The family needs to pitch in

Suckers, send them to public school and then they have to teach it all at home anyhow. Smart, but not too bright, I'd say.

[Varda]

Not suckers, just parents who aren't stupid. It doesn't matter what school you send a kid to, unless the parents (read mother) is involved and monitoring what the kid does it will be some sort of failure.
It's very rare for a kid to excel without a parent doing the background work.

[SamuraiScot]

Suckers, send them to public school and then they have to teach it all at home anyhow

"Suckers"? Wouldn't the real suckers be the ones who leave something important for their kid to learn to the government?

But it's really simpler than that. My parents taught me to read and write when I was 4--because I kept asking. I was writing unintelligible squiggles on paper in imitation of real writing anyway.

I was a drawing nut. So they used that. My mother wrote the name of some object she knew I could draw on the page. I had to draw a picture of the thing above its name.

Ideally, basic literacy is not something that should be entrusted to public employees. They don't know your kid.