Interesting piece. You wrote:
To me, the really detrimental isolation aspect occurs in the public schools themselves. Kids need to interact with lots of different age groups to grow up with a balanced outlook, sense of real security, competence, and sense of time and place, and their own roles within their respective communities.
Do you think schools that have grades K-8 do better than schools that are K-5 when it comes to interaction? When my son was an 8th graders, he would read to the 1st and 2nd grades for community service hours. I think the goals of this activity is to achieve the type of interaction you detailed above.
Yeah, that kind of stuff is great. Sadly, at least in my experience working in public schools both in the US and Japan, those times are the rare exceptions.