I didn't say anything about school. This article is about childcare for children below school age. But basic education is also actually quite cheap and easy to provide. Abraham Lincoln was educated in a one room school house. We have made it expensive by turning it into a bureaucratic nightmare with administrators, school boards, lawyers, and PTAs, when all you really need is a few good teachers who are given the authority to set and enforce high standards.
"until very recently" includes pre-industrial times to my understanding when education did not exist in an organized fashion for the poor.
[edit] And in what world is Abraham Lincoln considered "the poor" for his times? I am sure you can come up with some less fortunate people during the same times which didn't really get the experience of that one room schoolhouse.
The world is quite a lot bigger than Illinois though.
And it seems I need to spell it out for you, right there in the US during the same times, children of black people in the south didn't get access to education[1]. Serfdom was a thing in Europe until the early 1900, serfs children didn't get access to proper education[2]. I'm giving you a link to Russian education, but the whole of Eastern Europe was at a similar level. I don't know what kind of rose tinted cool aid you guys have been drinking.
