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When Schools Are the Police
First time accepted submitter Is Any Nickname Left writes "The Washington Post has an article on school systems with their own police forces. It focuses on Texas, which has the highest number of 'School Police Departments,' of which there are so many they have their own trade association. Highlights: 1) Houston fourth-grader stood on a stool so he could see the judge. He pleaded guilty. To a scuffle on a school bus. 2) 275,000 juvenile tickets in fiscal 2009, to students as young as 5. 3) Austin middle school student ticketed after she sprayed herself with perfume when classmates said she smelled. 4) a 17-year-old was in court after he and his girlfriend poured milk on each other. 'She was mad at me because I broke up with her,' he said. I waiting for the Alamo Heights Special Airborne Brigade and SEAL TEAM CROCKETT."
bag them while they are still young.
Police state? Hell, it's police kindergarten.
You can't handle the truth.
Fuck the police
You cannot teach someone when they are not willing to learn. If a child doesn't want to learn they should be expelled from school and given working papers. Why punish those that are there to learn with disruptive people?
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
You have (rightly or wrongly) taken from the schools a lot of their powers in regards to disciplining students. So where the school can not, the parents must. Except, the parents are not fulfilling their obligations in this regard, and the schools can not hold parents thusly responsible.
But the courts can.
Therefore, the school will begin referring your unique snowflake to the courts when their behavior exceeds what little remedies you have left available to the schools.
Did nobody see this coming?
My then, 17yo kid (he literally just turned a week previous) DEFENDED himself against a 14yo, who started a fight. My child was arrested and charged as an adult. The child who started the fight was not charged and was given one week of in school suspension. My child is now classified as a violent offender. He's fucked until he's at least 25. In Texas is it now, literally, illegal to defend yourself.
Police and Judges in Texas constantly prove they are incapable of intelligence, compassion, or logical application of the law. Stupidity, good 'ol boy politics, and bridged judges is an everyday event. Some judges only hold court a couple days per yet. Ya, things are that corrupt here.
It is indoctrination, the inculcation of the reflex to knuckle under to petty authority. Pedagogy takes a distant second to this primary urge.
Dog is my co-pilot.
so having a can of coke in class is disruptive?
http://www.njjn.org/uploads/Miscellaneous/Juvenile%20Probation%20Letterhead-letterfor%20Police%20Chief.doc
There's a lot of examples in TFA that are just silly. But there's also a lot of instances where schools don't go far enough. Sorry but if at age 15-18 you hit somebody at class, that's assault. I never understood why someone who is old enough to know the law be allowed to skirt it. If it's against the law when you are 25, it should be against the law when you are 17. Too many kids get away with crap in their teens and continue that into their adult life because they were never corrected.
Having been through the juvenile system in my younger days, I can tell you that what they typically do is suspend dispositions of minor offenses (mine was pot) upon completion of a intervention type program (usually probation, drug education, some type of work program or community service, etc.).
Getting an attorney involved in that process usually means a disposition is entered and the kid is sentenced accordingly (could be some term served in a juvenile facility).
During your suspended disposition, if you screw up again, they enter a disposition on the original charge.
Beware of the Leopard.
There's a serious lack of law in a state where a school needs to run their own police force.
There's a serious lack of public moral in a state where voters allow the previous two issues to exist.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
It worries me because of things like the recent "Kids for Cash" scam in Pennsylvania in which kids, unrepresented by lawyers, received huge out-of-state sentences for infractions that should have netted them a suspension or a week or two in jug. Two judges received millions in kickbacks. At least one kid took his own life. Who knows how many basically decent kids were introduced to lives of crime or otherwise psychologically damaged. In other words, I don't trust the governments that implement this kind of stuff.
On the other hand, we have parents assaulting teachers over a bad grade, big kids bringing in arsenals, little kids showing up with Daddy's (or Mommy's boyfriend's) handgun that they found under a sofa cushion, kindergarteners arriving with stashes of crack cocaine--the list is endless, and obviously teachers can't deal with these sorts of infractions. It's a huge problem, but I'm not sure police forces are the answer. Otherwise, all of the sudden every childish misbehavior is going to start looking like a major felony.
"Here's what's happening. You're starting to drive like your Dad..." - Red Green
"Forced education" has given most industrialized nations literacy rates far in excess of 90%. Stop talking hogwash. It strikes me that your lack of rational powers may in fact be a sign that you are a victim of a terrible education, or possibly terrible genes, or possibly, you're just a self-important moron.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
State governments are complaining about teacher's unions, but they have money to fund their own police departments? WTF? That's almost as bad as spending one dollar out of every four on the military, then telling people on Social Security and Medicare we need to cut their programs.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Just this month, Former Luzerne County Judge Mark Ciavarella Jr. was sentenced to 28 years in federal prison for taking a $1 million bribe from the builder of a pair of juvenile detention centers in a case that became known as "kids for cash.". http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/08/11/national/main20091371.shtml
This can happen to your kids too! I am so sick of all of the "unique snowflake" crap from people on here saying the schools and state should be able to do whatever they want to my kids to get them "in line". We homeschool all of our kids, are extremely respectful to all of them and treat them with the same respect and dignity I want for myself. I will never send them off to be harassed by the state and turned into a tool for the elites or a cog in the wheel. They live their lives along with us in the "real world" and are charting their own course rather than the one defined by the government, political, religious and corporate sponsors of education.
They're juveniles, so unfortunately they don't have that right. Juvenile courts work very differently from adult criminal courts. Basically, unless you're being tried as an adult, you're pretty much at the mercy of a single judge (with little recourse). That's what allowed those corrupt judges in Pennsylvania to get away with what they did.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
What is this? (Up until recently) Libya? North Korea?
When you have to put police in the school permanently then that's not the foundation for a civil society. It's a symptom of a serious societal problem. If children are taught that all disputes are solved by calling in the police and sitting in front of a judiciary, then how the hell are they going to learn their own negotiation skills, or that all disputes don't have to be solved with police / lawyers? It's like a fricking indoctrination into a 100% litigious and incarcerated society of the future. Oh, look, we see from your record that when little Jimmy was 6 he used the word "poop" in class, and when 12 he broke a bottle in the school yard. Oh, and then when 16 he failed to put a milk carton in the proper waste bin. When 17 he gave someone a wedgie. By 18 he drove the wrong way down a one-way street, and his life of crime only worsened from there. It's a shame. He had such a bright future when he was 5. So few of our kids today manage to keep a clean record. What is the world coming to?
Get a clue. Kids make mistakes. They make stupid decisions. They sort them out. *Sometimes* adults have to be involved because the events are serious, but for the vast majority it's innocent, stupid mistakes from which kids eventually learn better. Hand-holding them through a formal legal process of resolving disputes does not help them learn, especially when that legal process doesn't always get things right (it isn't perfect).
(10 years later) Don't like the fact that your neighbor's tree branch happens to dangle over your lawn? Don't bother, oh, actually talking to them. Just talk to your lawyer and send a letter demanding they remove the tree branch overhanging your property, and threaten to sue if they don't. After that, if they don't comply, call in the police. Never mind the insane costs to all taxpayers to settle everyone's petty little personal disputes. Never mind the lack of simple courtesy to try to solve problems. Just lawyer up and solve it that way, all the while paying the lawyers their cut and letting the costs of justice and police forces expand exponentially.
Yes, real violence happens in schools. Yes, real crime happens in schools. But for god's sake restrict the police and justice system's dealings to those matters, not fricking perfume spraying or intentionally spilled milk! Empower teachers and administrators to be able to do something without getting the legal and policing system involved. Police have better things to do, like catching real criminals and bringing them justice. I suppose you could justify this effort as a kind of education in civics, but in the real world you don't manage every dispute with formalities, otherwise government would have to be HUGE. I mean, look at this:
"documented 275,000 juvenile tickets in fiscal 2009"
275000 tickets in one year? How much did that cost? Is the state trying to make revenue on this? Or what? It's ridiculous. It's like a big tax on student mistakes, which is unavoidable. Students are *supposed* to make mistakes. They're not adults. Not to mention that I would guarantee that all the police officers and politicians currently in power would probably have a lengthy "school crime record" if something as insane as this was implemented in their day. And how comfortable would they be with that information being somewhere in a government database today? Probably not.
What a foundation for future generations the people making these decisions are building. It's appalling.
A lot of this is by design and you've stated the reason in your post.
There have been many small and scattered but continually growing and communicating groups of "education reformers" across the country. They believe that public education is wrong, either due to their own religious, social, or political views. These groups have their share of compassionate individuals who actually want the best for their kids, but tend to be lead by a minority of cause-pushing or money grubbing shitheads.
These shitheads have gotten parents to sue schools for ridiculous things. These shitheads have gotten on school boards and are in local, state, and federal government. These shitheads have sometimes come at cross-purposes simultaneously calling for greatly reduced school budgets and increases in school services. These shitheads refuse to send their own children to public schools, but actively make public school worse for all other children.
More often than not, the shitheads from Group A don't know about their fellow shitheads in Group B. Group A will be the religious home school shitheads who believe that all kids need their specific brand of Shithead Salvation (tm) so that they too may become shitheads and further the great shithead cause. Group B shitheads tend to be in it for the money. This is the group where all of the me-first, self-centered, money-grubbing Libertarian type shitheads meet and talk about how this country would be great if everyone would just do like they did and work hard, not realizing that the very society they rail against is the one that gave them the leg up in to the position they are now. But I digress.
Of course there are shitheads in groups C, D, E, and hell Z whynot, all with their own aims, agendas, and methods.
It is all of these shithead groups working for, but not necessarily together, toward a common goal which is private only education.
A. If you are of the wrong religion, fuck you.
B. If you are poor, fuck you.
C. If you are the wrong color, fuck you.
D. If you are handicapped, disabled, or in any way different and requiring special care, fuck you.
D+. A double helping of fuck you if any of the above apply.
E. If I disagree with the politics or lifestyle of your child, fuck you.
The end result is that the very wealthy will have the most educated children. Those in the upper middle class who are willing to sacrifice will have reasonably well educated children. Those in the middle and upper middle classes who aren't willing or aren't able to sacrifice will have children who learn to be blindly obedient to authority figures, take standardized tests, and not think or question. The poor can go fuck themselves.
Does this all sound familiar? It should. Most of the course of human civilization has used this model, from the ancient word, to the Dark Ages, Middle Ages, Renaissance, Industrial Revolution, Gilded Age, etc.
The best indicator we have of success is education. You will either provide decent education (note, this isn't warehousing, baby sitting, crowd management, or child processing, but education) or you will pay for a significant percentage of your population being incarcerated, and your economy being in shambles.
Time and time again, the very same children failing in public school environments, have excelled when placed in legitimate institutions committed to providing a safe, comprehensive, committed environments for children to learn. The failure is not in the children, it is in the public schools. The list of failures is nearly endless. Providing so little funding that schools resort to having fast food on their campuses leading to unhealthy diets high in sugar and fat, leading to poor physical and therefore mental performance (exacerbating attention disorders and chronic sleepiness in classes.) Insufficient funds for meaningful PE, art instruction, music instruction, computer science instruction and extracurricular activities make students less interested in their course work and curricula, provides them with insufficient opportunities to develop healthy social behavior, and in poorer communities where both parents work to feed their families, leaves children vulnerable to gangs and negative influences (those drugs mentioned above.)
Children are naturally curious and want to know. It takes an environment of trying to force kids into being the little automatons that governments and businesses so desperately want in their workforces and electorates to kill off the desire to learn. The state isn't interested in intellectually developed, informed and empowered civilians. Such people are a nightmare for Government. They have opinions and know how to voice them, they see trends and make informed conclusions and demand that their representatives tow the line. Government hates that. Much better to create an ignorant, superstitious public who get's their truth out of the little black corporate box in their living rooms and does what Fox news tells them to.
I agree there is a small percentage of special needs children, children acting out because they are being raised by monsters, children with medical conditions which make it hard or impossible for them to function normally in a class room. These children for the most part need special education to succeed, but significant information now available says that they indeed can lead productive, happy, contributing lives giving to society rather than simply taking. Until we're willing to spend as much on our children (as a society) as we do on pets, none of this should be a surprise. Over the last 3 years we secretly gave 1.2 trillion dollars to banks (half of them in other countries.) We've lined the pockets of wealthy and greedy men, and continue to do so. Our representatives refuse to tax the wealthy, while Rupert Murdoch stood up in public and said "FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT'S HOLY, TAX ME ALREADY!!!" Our schools just look like the rest of the train wreck, that's all.
Texas does lead the way in stupid however. Their government has been hijacked by the profoundly ignorant, and they're demonstrating what the decent into a police state looks like. Don't deal with the underlying causes long enough, keep addressing the symptoms, keep using magical thinking as your foundation for making decisions, all the while hoping the messiah will magic all your problems away, and you get Texas. The real problem is that a very large number of poorly educated people in this country think Texas is the model for the nation, and it scares me to bottom of my soul.
Show me a child unwilling to learn, and I'll show you the parents and teachers that continually failed the child.
I8-D
It is NOT lazy teachers, you self righteous asshole.
It is parents like yourself who do not raise their kids to have respect, that are a problem. When parents sue the school for disciplining their kids, when parents refuse to discipline their kids, and when parents refuse to support teachers; then what do you expect to happen.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
I was the annoying kid who loved learning up until about 5th grade. That was when I got told that i didn't exist, DARE replaced science class, and I had to talk my English teacher into letting me do a book report on The Fellowship of the Ring, because she thought it was too long. Also got the shit kicked out of me for years for being such a 'nerd'.
Proudly a C student after that little experience. Never stopped being a nerd (and proud of it) though. Just turned toward things that interested me, rather than what was being taught to me in classes.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
Rupert Murdoch? Did you mean Warren Buffet, or did I miss some interesting news?
First off, the 5th grader isn't going to understand the different in income. As long as the engineer and the athlete both bring in enough money for cookies and video games, it's the same to them.
What you are describing is a kindergardener or slow first grader. 5th graders comprehend fairly complicated material. Cookies and video games my ass, my brother was in fifth grade last year (myself being in my last year of college), and we discussed many things in a level of detail that I sadly think is superior to a good portion of the adults that I talk to.
I'd be willing to say that by fifth grade a person is well capable of adult logic and thoughts, they just tend to lack maturity and experience.
There use to be a lot of news about the probability of Texas breaking from the union. My question: Why aren't we convincing them to do it!?
List of problems that will be solved:
1. Weed being illegal (Some guy in Texas is blocking it from even getting a formal debate because he has his hands in the cartel's pockets)
2. This article
3. Software patents
4. A large portion of "The Good Ol' Boy Network"
Isn't it a good thing we have money for the police state but not for a lower student:teacher ratio?
If we herded all the students into one giant room, think of the cost savings, one teacher per room, no need for administrative staff and such. Just cops ready to write tickets (and generate revenue).
Explored this in great detail. It also shows just how multi-faceted the problem is. Not just limited to liberals or republicans or unions or gun-toting texans.
IMO the biggest problem is us. While many problems exist, there are many decent solutions to them but require major change which generally speaking we fear. How many times have you heard a political candidate say something that you agree with, and say to yourself "man that's a great idea, too bad they're not electable." Why aren't they electable, because they want to bring change* when people really want a calm status quo.
*The current president doesn't count. His version of change is "not W" which isn't bad in itself, it's just not the change we need.
"Forced education" has given most industrialized nations literacy rates far in excess of 90%. .
Most totalitarian states have high literacy rates. So what? I wouldn't want to be a Cuban or North Korean.
We should seriously consider replacing state compulsory education... going a state approved school, or else... with a simple requirement that you get an education from a source of your choosing. And I say this as a man with a college degree, a son that's in his junior year of high school, and another son that just started Kindergarten last week. Most compulsory education systems exist either to produce a supply of workers, and/or indoctrinate children. There is no education for education's sake in America's schools, or anyone elses. There are a variety of other ways to educate children... Montesorri, private schools, home schooling, unschooling... that prove packing kids into a government box to stare at a chalkboard 8 hours a day is not the best way to do things.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Can someone explain to me, why the USA is so violent?
Are you being snide? I should kick your ass for that...
As an inhabitant of the USA, I think the biggest problem is the strong individualistic streak that we have. It seems like there are a lot of people who just get caught up in things and don't think of anyone but themselves, and culturally this is being reinforced. They want to be involved in everything, be the center of attention and have the world revolve around them. Short sighted people want immediate gratification and respect, and fuck you if you don't give it to them.
Most people here aren't like this though, just enough to make the rest of the world think we are a bunch of violent, impatient jerks.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
It is parents like yourself who do not raise their kids to have respect, that are a problem.
Respect what, exactly? I get along great with my kids' teachers. On the few occasions when my kids have done something boneheaded, their teachers have emailed me and I addressed the problem at home. It's a two-way street, though: I respect those teachers because they deserve it (which is the default setting for teachers until proven otherwise).
In contrast, my oldest had a terrible teacher when she graduated from one school and started in another. I'll skip the details, but the essence was that my daughter was expected to sit quietly in class when she finished one subject until it was time to start the next. If she did her math assignment in 5 minutes, she was required to sit still at her desk for the rest of the allotted hour. She wasn't allowed to read a book ("it's not reading time!"). She wasn't allowed to work ahead ("we're on page 23, not 37. Stay on page 23!"). She was held in at recess once for "looking bored in class" (swear to God - those were the teacher's words to me). I didn't respect that teacher or expect my daughter to, and I told everyone involved why. That loserish babysitter didn't deserve respect beyond the minimal "I have authority in this room so you have to obey me while you're in it" level.
I respect people who deserve it. I don't respect people who don't. And I'm not going to tell my kids to give respect to authorities simply because they're authorities.
PS: Save the inevitable Slashdot "we only have your side of the story!" speech for someone who cares. The story happened as I told it, and if you don't believe me, don't waste your breath telling me why. We transferred her to another school after one quarter in the crappy one, and she's been on the honor roll for seven quarters straight and was given an award for being the best reader in the school for all of last year. She's a good kid who had a martinet of a disaffected teacher and we fixed the problem.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I'm confused. Isn't Texas supposed to be the state of small government, balanced budgets, and personal responsibility?
Shouldn't they just be giving the kids guns and letting them sort it out themselves?
This is fear, and that fear is raising gold prices to crazy levels.
- no, this comes from you misunderstanding basic economics.
Gold is money. There is no fear and there is no uncertainty or doubt that fiat is debased and will continue being debased. This government is convinced that it must destroy the currency for their Keynesian solutions to work, so they will do so. Nominal gold value changes but actual purchasing power stays.
US treasuries are fine, because if they fail it won't matter.
- hold on, hold on. So are you saying they are "fine" OR are you saying that it does not matter whether they are "fine" or not? I am not clear on your statement, which is it?
US treasuries are not fine at all, with interest rates being lowest ever (actually 10 year bond hitting 1.99% yield! That's the most expensive coupon and the lowest yield in history of that 10 year bond.)
US treasuries are in an enormous bubble, with Fed now secretly purchasing where it was purchasing openly for 6 months till June 22. Fed was buying 100% of all new printed bonds, there were no buyers. They printed 600 billion USD and that's how much debt Treasury issued in that time.
If the USA defaults your gold will be worthless, since you can't eat it.
- USA has defaulted already a number of times, last was in 1971, when it defaulted on the promise to pay gold for federal reserve notes. It also defaulted during Civil war and around WWI.
Does this actually do anything to gold? Well no, because nominal prices do not matter at all, the only prices that are important are prices relative to gold and those are pretty much always the same.
Also I bring your attention to the fact that it is after all a depression right now, since fuel is cheapest ever in history of USA as well - under 10 cents per gallon. Those are 10 silver cents of-course, minted prior to 1965.
Can I eat gold? Well, excuse me, can you eat US dollars? Gold is money, don't forget that. I have a long record on this site, for many years now saying the same thing, and I like to reference those old comments often.
Gold highs do not go back 40 years, look a the plummet in the 80s.
- yes, in nominal terms after US defaulted on the promise to pay gold for federal reserve notes, an ounce started at 35 USD and went all the way up to 800USD, and then Paul Volcker came and set interest rates to over 20%.
THAT was what took gold down, because with money that expensive, people want to have it, not other assets. Gold is money, but dollar became an investment. Money is not an investment, it's a store of value, unit of account and means of exchange.
Of-course gold went down at that time to 350USD/ounce, still 10 times as high as it was in 1971.
However now the interest rates have been 1 and 0% for over a dozen of years, so the debt of USA now is so huge, that 1% move in interest rates causes USA to spend 200BILLION dollars more just to service the debt (interest payments increase by 200Billion with each 1%), so you think they'll bring interest rates back up?
Don't you know that Bernanke came out and said he won't bring interest rates back up for 2 years? That's a huge Bernanke put, he now gave the market a green light to go ahead and gamble on the Treasury market, because he is guaranteeing a return or whatever the Treasury yields. That's why the Treasury prices are up.
But this can't last due to this reason: the inflation, which USA exports to foreign countries, is causing massive price hikes in those countries, followed by social unrest and political instability. Basically by holding US debt and dollars, the foreign governments are asking their own people to sacrifice ever more in terms of their purchasing power to bail out US consumer.
How long do you think that will last for? I don't see that goi
You can't handle the truth.
Bzzzt! Wrong answer.
My point was that if someone understands something when they're in the 5th grade then they probably have the same understand (or a more complete understanding) when they're an adult.
Unless they have some kind of brain trauma.
So claiming that a large number of adults have a limited understanding of something means that when they were in the 5th grade their understanding of that material was as limited (if not more so).
And yet learning math (to be an engineer) is not a moral issue. Why would math be moral or immoral?
Check it, folks. That is ONE sentence there.
And, again, the point was that if an adult does not understand something then it cannot (logically) follow that he understood it when he was in the 5th grade (unless he underwent some brain trauma).
If I have Abraham Lincoln's skull from when he was 12 ... he would never have reached the age of 21. Therefore, I cannot possess two skulls from him at two different ages.
Mocking your grammatical misadventures is similar to that. If you have the skills to form grammatically correct sentence structures, that means that you had learned them in the past. If you lack those skills, that means you did not learn them in the past. Or you have brain trauma.
So, asking a 5th grader to make a career choice (or evaluating the importance of education) is stupid.
The kid in 5th grade lacks all the following years of experience and knowledge that she/he would gain from school and life in those years.
No child left behind. Hey, I know... let's elect another President from Texas. So far every one of them has started a war (and on shaky circumstances, too) and screwed not just the Texas school system but the National one as well.
But I'm sure the next one will be ok.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
Oh yes, because that's always an excuse. "Oh, he has ADHD. He's bipolar." Letting that fly = special treatment. Treatment that minority kids and parents will bring up when their kids are the ones in court. Then the cries of racism start...
In your own words, you say that "minority kids" are demanding "special treatment." You decry those who speak against the racism of the educational establishment. We have seen fit to teach you that your position is founded in ignorance.
On the 19th of July, 2011, great scholars in service to His Excellency the Emperor completed and published a report on the disciplinary practices of Texas secondary schools. Among many troubling revelations and insights, one particular excess of the Texas educational system was brought to light:
The study also showed significant differences in disciplinary outcomes by race, even when controlling for other factors such as type of offense and socioeconomic status. âoeMinority students facing discipline for the first time tended to be given the harsher, out-of-school suspension, rather than in-school suspension, more often than white students, the study saidâ¦A disproportionate number of minority students also ended up in alternative classrooms, where some have complained that teachers are often less qualified.â 70% of black girls had been suspended, compared to only 37% of white girls, despite often committing the same offenses.
Let it be known. Minority students are indeed subject to "special treatment" in the form of more severe and more frequent punishments even when accused of the same offenses. Rumors that minorities receive preferential treatment from government institutions are sheer ignorance perpetuated by those who advocate racism and authoritarianism.
We have enlightened you. Spread your lie no more.
"Forced education" has given most industrialized nations literacy rates far in excess of 90%. Stop talking hogwash.
Maybe some nations. Not really in the U.S. Actual functional literacy rates in the U.S. have been around 75-80% for the past century.
The "99%" rate cited in some sources for the U.S. is crap, usually based on census self-reporting (i.e., people get someone else to check a box for them). By the way, the same census figures said that over 90% of the U.S. (free) population was literate when such statistics were first taken in 1840. (Massachusetts was 98%, I think.) Look it up. That's before even primary schooling was compulsory in any state. Whether or not that number is accurate, a number of studies have suggested that somewhere around 80% literacy existed in the early U.S.
Don't believe me about the last century? Take a look at draft rejections during WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. And then take a look at recent detailed literacy surveys. The army can't lie about literacy. When it needs to draft soldiers, it drafts as many as it can -- it only rejects those who are truly functionally illiterate. In all of these wars, somewhere around 20% were rejected for being illiterate -- the numbers have not changed significantly. And recent literacy surveys agree with this number for functional literacy.
Between 1910 and 1970, high school graduation went from neither nothing to the vast majority of citizens. Literacy numbers didn't change significantly. That's what "forced education" got us.
That's true in the USA only if you count "literacy" as being able to sound out words without a functional understanding or ability to make simple inferences.
If you discount those who have limited understanding of anything past basic English, and a lack of ability to answer more than basic questions about any text utilizing moderately complex language, the rate falls to about 70%.
http://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93275.pdf
With all the things you describe, life in America seems extremely freightening. In comparison, life in Europe seems utopian, when compared to America.
Yeah, schools and teachers were basically invented because parents have better things to do than educate their children, and aren't very good at it on top of that. That's why they are CALLED teachers, because they are the ones who are paid good money to TEACH students.