It’s a bit of a bugbear of mine that some people insist that schools serve a function of keeping young people docile and unquestioning. I mean, I was educated a while ago now, but at a state school, and the absolute #1 thing I remember from history was being taught always to question the bias of your sources. Hardly the actions of system dedicated to preventing children from questioning authority. I’m pretty sure kids these days are not being taught ‘Yay! The British Empire was Great’ or ‘The government is fantastic, questioning it is disloyal’, by those notorious right-wingers, teachers.
With DD starting secondary next term, I’d be interested to know if anyone does feel from their own child’s current experience, that schools are somehow attempting to beat them down into dumb subservience? As most of the people I hear espousing the view don’t seem to be those with kids in schools currently.
I guess people also go ‘Oh, but it’s all this “obedience” and following “rules”’ which I think is also kind of bullshit because people actually are intelligent enough to see the difference between rules needed to get along with things like learning, and things in the world that are profound injustices. You can follow the school rules all your educational life and still go on to protest against government abuses of human rights or whatever – it doesn’t mean you get conditioned to accept everything you’re told to think or do.
Don’t get me wrong, too many young people are ill-served by underfunded schools, but lack of critical thinking is probably more to do with distracting media and the rampant self-interest it promotes then schools being some wicked hand of The State.