I can't speak for how things were in the past, but it seems that today children are becoming less valued in general. This is not to say that society isn't devoting resources to children. It's that children aren't being valued as unique individuals.
I feel that society is giving children what society wants rather than what children need. For example, I feel that these new layers of testing in the schools (No Child Left Behind) are a step in the wrong direction. It almost seems that the goal is to make all children the same, even though that's obviosuly impossible.
The best type of education would allow a child to follow their own path. Instead, it seems like schools are trying to put everyone on the same path. Why can't a child be a great math student and a poor history student? If he or she really loves math and not history, then what's the point in continually drilling them on history? Once the test is complete, the so-called knowledge disappears and the student's original interests remain.
I think the homeschooling movement is a great trend. In a biological sense, parents are the original educators. When the homeschooling movement started, I remember people thinking it was only for religious nuts or hippies. Then homeschoolers started turning up and beating the public school kids in various competitions. Finally, people started to catch on: maybe you don't really need a school to educate children.
The other thing that bugs me about all this is that there is no connection to evolution. Genetic evolution is all about variation. Each person has a different package of traits. These differences facilitate the process of sexual selection. If everyone was equal or the same, there are no differences to be selected upon. Each child should be encouraged to maximize their unique traits - not minimize them.
I hope the future brings more unconventional schools to the world of education. There are already enough standards and categories for children. Let children develop and unfold as the unique beings that they are.
