To help foster growth, kids need a person that encourages them when they fail, keeps them from trouble and bad influences, disciplines them when they make bad decisions, helps with their mental health, and encourages them to learn and grow in whatever interest the kid enjoys.

Not all children have access to this kind of role model. And even if they do, it's not a guarantee, just a more favorable probability.

School is so strained that it can't be this system by itself. Good teachers help, but they're transitory, and typically not available after hours. And very few care in the same way a parent, grandparent, relative, or adoptive family would as they're not as deeply invested.

Other children can be horrible influences that can make a child depressed, angry, lose faith in themselves, and take up bad habits. Kids need to be shielded and told that the pain they experience is temporary, that life holds promise, and that the problems they face can be overcome.

It's a very hard and important problem.

Removing children from the offending environment would be the best alternative I can think of.

But as others have mentioned that has quite a bit of historical baggage, and of course children and parents would both hate it.

It's only hindsight that teaches us valuable lessons about this kind of stuff, sadly.

I wasn't offering better options, I was just opining a lost youth and denigrating a terrible education system.

But it was "free".