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Notes -
To be clear, historically Catholic schools were staffed by nuns(unmarried women) and in the United States other schools were staffed by literal teenaged girls(unmarried women). Now high school teachers require more subject matter expertise(and this probably extends into many middle school grades/subjects) so it seems like this was always a college educated job. Agreed that even the taliban allows preadolescent girls to go to school with no special conditions, and that modern special ed, flawed as it is, is genuinely a skilled profession that is likely an improvement over previous systems. But the fact remains that a bright sixteen year old can teach a 'normal' third grade classroom, elementary school teaching as a career track- and at least a large portion of the administration growth in schools- is about pulling middle class women who love children into careers. Absent that ideological push 'elementary school teacher' would be similar to 'lunchlady' or whatever, where a college degree isn't necessary.
It's also important to note that elementary school used to be much shorter, with less demand for teachers. My own parents remember kindergarten being treated as advanced preschool(and regularly skipped), with no such thing as preK and first grade having a loosey-goosey attitude to attendance, sometimes first and second grades were combined. While not doing this obviously requires more teachers it's not clear that it's better.
Modern elementary school does have a much stronger childcare component than neighborhood schools in the past (though not necessarily more than boarding schools, which were somewhat more common). I could certainly imagine heading in the direction of educational assistants supervising children as they learn from interactive digital materials, or several educational assistants directly teaching phonics to the children if the older teachers find it too unbearably boring.
As far as hiring a 16 year old who's likely to quit to form her own family after six year or so, vs a 23 year old who's likely to take maternity leave at some point for an elementary teacher, it just depends on what the prevailing life path for the society in general is. As you mentioned elsewhere, elementary teachers are pretty conformist, and will teach at 16 if that's the Done Thing, or else go to college if that's the way to show you're conscientious and normal. I doubt there's a way back at this point, since generalist labor is increasingly automated, so there isn't that much demand for even more very young women to work before having kids.
Well yes, it exists in relation to prevailing life paths is my point- I’m merely disputing the direction of causation.
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