My first thought is,
why are you weighting in on public schools at all?
If you went to a parochial school of any kind; that is not a public school, that is a private school whether your parents paid for it or not. So you have no real cause or right to critique a system you never had any experience in.
Secondly, I can't image why anyone would put a child into a school whose stated cause celebre was to shape the formation of the spiritual and mental out look of a malleable young mind. With an emphasis on the spiritual. After all the whole meaning of the title "parochial school' is right there in the first two definitions of parochial. I quote 'relating to a church parish" Def. 2, "having a limited or narrow outlook or scope".
Just a question umbrarchist; while there are a myriad of quite valid questions and criticisms to slam the public school system with, why do you think that public school system relates to an essentially privately run school system? And how would you even know what the difference might be?
And I might add, that is from one that absolutely detested the daily school class room kabuki dance and mostly didn't play well within that charade.
School is about maintaining authoritarian cultural tradition.
That is true enough..............whether it is within this system or in a small clan far out beyond the ramparts of our civilization and every where between.
If it was really about economics then accounting/finance should be mandatory. But no, dumb workers should be easy to rip off.
That's where the humanities studies come in. Critical thinking.
Ever since the public school system was conceived the business interests have sought to bend it towards its own ends. Sometimes not so successfully but of late seems to have finally realized their goal, obedient workers and consumers. They cowed the wage slaves to the point that the public school system is nothing more than a conveyor belt of tech training for increasingly limited jobs that demand 24/7 on-call attention.
You speak of economics. Economics of what? You want to teach about economics? how about the teaching the economics of scale. Like how much longer can we continue to consume yearly 2 1/2 planet earths worth of natural resources and carry on? Our habitat is shrinking daily in so many ways I won't begin to list them here.
Or perhaps your thinking about teaching of Historical materialism. Or how the commodity hides its origin. Or maybe the politics of consumption and commodity fetishism.
Is that the economics you feel should be taught in schools?
That is where I learned that the Sun was a star. Shocked the hell out of me.
You were shocked in what way? Why?
At eight, nine and ten years old it should have been a source of wonder and awe. Not shock.
Thank the parochial school for shock.