There's periodic breaks where the kids who reached puberty first are allowed to hunt you for sport.

20 is optimistic.

These days you’re lucky if you have less than 30 in your class. The classrooms are still designed for 20, though

Ok, schoolsc are typically some variation of 8-3, which is 7 hours. I have no idea where you're getting 12 hours from other than some crazy extreme outlier.

During that 7 hours, you think they just sit in a room, and get handed shit after shit? That's not even close to reality. That "massive" 7 hours is about 4 hours broken up into 45-1 hour increments after you have lunch/recess for an hour, a second or third recess that's 30-1 hour, art class, music class, gym, ect.

Beyond that, I have no idea how you think they should learn anything without sitting and practicing. I'm not sure if you're aware, but when a lot of states went to in hime learning during covid, the kids did fucking horrible.

You don't want 25 kids in a class with 3 teachers? Pay more taxes to hire more people to be in the class. You don't want higher taxes? Well your math doesn't math. If you think teachers only work between their contract hours, you're on fucking crack. All that decorative shit in their room? That's out of pocket not reimbursed shit they bought. All the little snacks your kid gets is out of pocket, not reimbursed. Most teachers skip their lunch and they don't get a penny of overtime.

How would you feel if you had to buy nearly everything at you job you used, turn had to work 50 hours a week to get your job done right to be paid for 40 hours. Getting paid on breaks? Yeah, you're paying yourself. Every check has an amount withheld so you can pay yourself over breaks, holidays, and summer. It's not "free money" you're paid.

Then you have parents like yourself that have zero clue how anything works, how to even deal with working in a class with 25 kids. But somehow you have all the answers and are an expert? Sure, whatever you say.

20 only?

Especially for us neurodivergents.

What could work better?

I would argue that rich people systematically destroying everything they can has a LOT more of an impact on mental health than air pollution

Not everyone's school time was shitty.

Especially those of us who had school before "A Nation at Risk" incited changes in education.

Reagan's department of education concluded that falling scores meant kids were slacking and needed to be pushed harder on standardized testing. The result was culling of recess, gym, arts, and things like home economics/shop class. To make more room to hammer in "important" stuff. So the experience became razor focused on some of the most soul crushing material without much reprieve. Note that there's a thought that making people take the tests they didn't used to take caused scores to go down, rather than some soft laziness of the system, so we might have 'fixed' the wrong things.

Then COVID happened and schools dramatically cut back on social events and interactions. Even as the critical threat of COVID subsided, I think administration found it easier to manage the students this way, so students did not access to lockers back (because that would encourage congregation in hallways) and on top of everything else, they have to lug all their school stuff around. Somewhat a mixed bag as most of the 'textbook's are digital now, but still have a few big ones.

For me, school had carved out time to socialize pretty freely, to be vaguely active in a gym class, to just do some woodworking stuff, to do some cooking and sewing. Recess until like 13 years old. Current kids stop getting recess about 10 or so and unless they join a sports team likely never see physical activity from school again, and while there are still electives, much more rare. I don't think I even saw an option for a 'home ec' class in my kid's elective options, everything seemed to be more 'substantial' than those sorts of classes I had growing up.