Schooling and opportunity cost

Economics in One Lesson has been on the list of books I want to read for a few years, but I've only recently started reading it. I don't think I've seen the phrase "opportunity cost" yet, but the idea is coming up frequently. For example, when the merchant has to spend money to replace his broken window, he may have been planning on using that money to buy a new suit. Instead of ending up with an unbroken window and a new suit, and being out $250, the merchant ends up with an unbroken window, out $250, and lacking a new suit. The new suit is the opportunity cost. (Although I may be technically incorrect in that, given that the strict definition of opportunity cost probably involves a choice being made. In the broken window fallacy, there is no choice -- the merchant must replace the broken window.)

In any case, my wife and I were discussing schooling the other night, and it occurred to me to do a partial opportunity-cost analysis of the situation (to put it in high-falutin' terms.) Basically, the thought I had was this: if the school is spending time indoctrinating my kid, that's time the school isn't spending teaching my kid something useful. So there the opportunity cost is the useful material that my kid isn't learning at school.

But it gets worse. Consider the case in which I feel that the school isn't fully educating my child and that I can supplement his education with informal homeschooling. If the school is spending time indoctrinating my child, I have to spend time fixing that indoctrination. Thus I'm forced to make the decision as to how to spend my time -- fixing the indoctrination or providing additional education. In this case, it's likely that the supplemental education would be the opportunity cost. And in this case, the opportunity cost is twice as big as in the case above: there's useful education he's not getting at school, and there's useful supplemental education he's not getting at home.

Guh.