For the first two centuries of America’s existence, almost everyone could read and ‘cipher’ (do basic math)… and they did it without ANY public schools, as they’re known in our time. The institutionalized indoctrination centers of today were unthinkable to early Americans. Past generations of Americans had high value for the education of their children — much more than Americans of today. What was the difference? A lot! But rather than handing over their children to the state to be “educated” by the state, and for the goals of the state, almost all education then was handled by families, religious organizations, tutors, community-run and private schools. And it was done within a free and open market mentality, without top-down controls from a faraway bureaucracy.