Until you tell them that you were referring to our own dear school system. They are only imprisoned for five days out of seven. The psychological effects of school hang like a pall over children's lives, twisting their thinking and stunting their intellectual and psychological growth, whether it is a school day or not. How would you feel if you were told today that you must go to school for the next eleven years, that you must attend all the classes I have deemed necessary for you, that you must submit to humiliating procedures and that you will probably be in fear for your physical safety much of the time. Even this comparison fails to capture some of the more destructive effects of compulsory schooling on children.
Childhood is both the most important and the most vulnerable period of life.
Children are at the beginning of their lives and do not have the inner resources that you might use to palliate an eleven-year imprisonment. Furthermore you are not in the position of having an overwhelming need to please your parents. As adults, most of us have to a significant extent escaped the need not to disappoint our parents or invoke their wrath. But children cannot throw off the need for their parents' love and approval without terrible emotional cost. Even given that I am free from parental coercion, being forced to go to school would ruin my life.