I currently do so. I do not understand its relevance with regards to my involvement in this thread..
You seemed to express incredulity that education for the poor could be provided voluntarily. I was suggesting that since you and others currently voluntarily do so, or at least would voluntarily do so if they were not forced to do so, that they would continue to do so without being forced.
I expressed incredulity that anyone would be so naive as to think that the little bit of volunteering is anywhere near sufficient to compare to public institutions, or that poor people can afford any sort of education at all.
It worked fine before public funded education took over the religious imperative to educate children. Still would, if the government would get out of the way. Public education isn't about education, it's about social indoctrination. Always has been, and the early proponents were pretty open about that. They were, predominately, pro-eugenics fascists; before those were "bad". They honestly believed that the lower classes needed to be 'indoctrinated' and acclimatized to the industrial factory work.
It sounds like serfdom to me. Anyone who truly believes that the poor can pick up and educate themselves has never spent time in a third world country...or the southeastern united states.
They can and will, if that is what is left to them. Some will fail, obviously; or be failed by their parents. There is nought that public education is going to do to stop such trend, if the US is in long term decline. For that matter, they have been trying to do exactly that since truancy laws were introduced to the US; and moreso since the Department of Education was established, and have always failed. Try as they (and you) might, with the best of intentions, you cannot educate those who do not see value in it. I attended a private school my entire childhood, at great expense to my parents, because of the sorry state of publicly funded education; yet the private schools are
still modeled after the public institutions. They end up that way because of efficiency. My children are homeschooled, mostly by my wife who has a BS in Biology. They make me look ignorant. The major difference is that they don't spend hours each day in educational theater, surrounded by peers who do not wish to participate in the soul-crushing day-prison. Ever wonder how a well behaved child can be a discipline nightmare at school? It's often a direct result of the educational environment itself.
I would keep doing supplemental tutoring with four children who have nothing. I don't think my meager efforts would save them if they weren't allowed a public education.
Good for you, but don't delude yourself about their education. Your efforts would be fruitless if not for their own efforts and the desires of their parents. The average homeschooled child spends only 2-3 hours each day actually working on intentionally educational work. So if you think about it, the truly successful students who are institutionally educated (public or private) are being homeschooled by their involved parents anyway. It's just under the direction of the institution.