As so many other things, what makes education a tricky thing to manage is the many different ideologies and agendas that demand to have a say in it.

The market wants the bare minimum that creates a never ending pool of cheap labor, preferably one that cannot fight back. The right will often demand something “patriotic”, “religious” and ban loads of “subversive” content, in some cases praising military teaching as ideal (see Brazil). The left usually wants kids to learn social stuff, like sociology, philosophy, etc, things “without market value”, but which can help them realize why some stuff is the way it is. Then you have school directors who may swing any each way and individual teachers who may comply or try to “subvert” the higher ups.

One of the things that annoys me a lot about education is that, in much of the world, it still works on a assembly-line logic. Make kid pass through process, test to see if it passes minimal quality assurance, proceed to next step; if not, repeat the entire previous process (imagine redoing a whole fucking year because you couldn’t be arsed about one of the many things that are pointlessly taught at school). Maximize production, reduce costs (1 teacher per 40 kids)

“When education does not free a person, the dream of the oppressed is to become the opressor.” - Paulo Freire was so damn right that, to this day, the Brazilian right demonizes him, wrongly accusing public schools and universities of being “breeding grounds of communists” for using his method (which is bullshit, his method was aimed first at teaching adults how to read and, afaik, no public schools ask the kids to “bring their home experiences” so they can be contextualized in the teaching)

Republicans hate public education. The Republican Party has been captured by Russia. That’s this post’s origin story.

Be careful not to cut yourself on that edge.

Stick it to the man! Stop learning! /s

They say “Every child has a right to education.”

And then behave as if it’s “Every child has a responsibility to be educated.”

So yeah, while I absolutely think education in itself is vital, I do get peeved when they immediately lie by changing what they do versus what they say.

By they, I mean outdated education boards of self-absorbed twits who grew up decades earlier and have no real grasp of what today’s generation needs.

The teen angst is over 9000

I’m guessing you didn’t do too well in school.

I pledge allegiance

To the flag

It is as if they are training young people to live in a prison.