Yes, and I wrote that to point out that emteycz's comment about "compulsory daily school attendance", which wasn't true in colonial MA, still isn't true now in the US, so if that's the key point for what the Prussian model means, then we don't have it.
> they do follow an industrial model that teaches conformity
I earlier pointed to http://hackeducation.com/2015/04/25/factory-model and its objections to that characterization of the history of US education.
See the section starting "Sal Khan is hardly the only one who tells a story of “the factory of model of education” that posits the United States adopted Prussia’s school system in order to create a compliant populace. It’s a story cited by homeschoolers and by libertarians ... the history of schools doesn’t map so neatly onto the history of factories (and visa versa). As education historian Sherman Dorn has argued, “it makes no sense to talk about either ‘the industrial era’ or the development of public school systems as a single, coherent phase of national history.”"
I'll ask you - what do you mean by "conformity" and "obedience to authority"? As an example to test an extreme case, if your children decided to set fire to the house, to see what would happen, would you prevent them? If so, is that enforcing obedience to authority or conformity?
We can look back to colonial MA to see that part of "conformity" and "obedience to authority" was that children should be taught religions beliefs and the laws of the colony. Your children had to learn at least the latter, so how is that also not teaching conformity?
We can also look to, say, the charity schools in England during the 1600s (definitely pre-industrial) and see that there too was some sort of teaching of conformity and obedience to authority.
So you can hardly single out the industrial model in that regard - it seems intrinsic to education at some level or other. Even in unschooling.
Furthermore, the US education system is both class and race based. See https://www1.udel.edu/educ/whitson/897s05/files/hiddencurric... for an overview from 1980. ("In the two working-class schools, work is following the steps of a procedure.", "In the middle-class school, work is getting the right answer.", "In the affluent professional school, work is creative activity carried out independently.", "In the executive elite school, work is developing one's analytical intellectual powers.")
Your characterization of US schools does not seem to include all of that diversity.
As for "individual ideas and interests don’t matter much", certainly my own experience in the US education system doesn't agree with your characterization.
In the 1970s I was placed in the gifted program, with a once-per-week "enrichment program". Among other things, I remember that at the start of the day the teachers listed available classes and we got to choose which ones we would attend.
That's certainly a school system which supports the differing needs of individuals, yes? I stopped that program in 3rd grade, but even then I still remember options like being able to volunteer in the library instead of going to some classes, or career period where we tried different activities that interested us. (I learned how to use a printing press and ended up making a end-of-the-year signature book for the 5th and 6th grade classes.)
Then by 7th grade we started having electives, where we could choose those classes which fit our interests. In my case it was math (up to ODEs), physical sciences (up to AP chem and physics), CS (up to AP programming), and history (up to AP US and European history). In particular those math classes were set up special for the handful of us interested in courses beyond AP calc, and were taught for college credit.
While others were interested in art, or shop, or music, or foreign languages, or one of the many other courses taught at a large urban high school. (Something it appears your children did not get to experience.)
So the idea that the "individual ideas and interests don’t matter much" is foreign to my experience. Note that my high school was border line between middle-class and affluent, of those 5 school types I referenced.
Also, this was in the 1970s and 1980s, with teachers who lived through the counter-culture 1960s, and before the Reagan tax-cuts and following neoliberal era destroyed public services while pushing for an authoritarian "business" organization of what was left.
But the point behind my anecdotal evidence is to reinforce the point I quoted earlier - “it makes no sense to talk about either ‘the industrial era’ or the development of public school systems as a single, coherent phase of national history.”"
Going further afield, schools like NYC's School of Performing Arts (which provided the base for the movie and TV series 'Fame'), Bronx Science, and other magnet schools are meant to support individual interests, and aren't necessarily the nearest school. Are those part of the industrial model that says individual ideas and interests don’t matter much?
Or I'll quote from my grandfather's autobiography of his experience during the Great Depression:
> [At trade school] you could get full high school credits besides learning a shop. In those days (in Canada) there was virtually no graduation anyway. You "got your diploma" from Regina the Capital by mail and so you were finished. I think [my brother] got his. I didn't. I opted not for one by for 4 shops. You did classroom work with competent teachers, but (if you so desired) you could spend most of your time in the shop. I took electric wiring. (We actually romex-wired an entire house which we had framed in the shop. I also took woodworking which included the building of the frame house and many finer shop learning experiences, such as lathe work, jointing, mortising. But my greatest interest was machine shop and motor mechanics. These were valuable to me. The machine shop was well equipped with shaper, lathes, forge, grinding & cutting tools. I worked there all hours on my special project – a little one-cylinder gas engine. I cast the crankcase of aluminum (recycled) and dressed it out on the 8 foot lathe. I cast the piston, built crankshaft, turned flywheel made connecting rod & cylinder head on shaper. Turned valves, but didn't get to making the manifolds. We had our classes which included designing & putting projects into mechanical drawings.
> The auto mechanic shop was just as interesting. I did oxy-acetylene welding, wet battery construction, engine disassembly and reassembly. Classroom projects were very valuable. We studied internal combustion, transmissions (it was before automatics) drive systems rear-ends, suspension systems etc.
Again, is this part of the industrial model you describe?