> The whole point of education is to beat children into the mold that fits society's expectations and needs, not their own. I'm not sure I agree. I think I gre

> The whole point of education is to beat children into the mold that fits society's expectations and needs, not their own. I'm not sure I agree. I think I grew up as an emotionally mature, successful (so far), yet quite unusual person, despite having been schooled for a long time and acing most of the formal requirements of the institutions. My parents always said, "trust us, you need to go to school" even though I didn't want to (I mean, obviously, I had a computer and games and a compiler!), but now I agree with them - back then, I couldn't imagine the perspective, breath, width, emotional maturity and social development that further years of schooling would give me, and I couldn't appreciate the extent to which schooling, vocation and other long-term choices that we make (or are guided towards) as completely inexperienced adolescents will shape the future 60-80 years of my life (I'm only about 10 years down the road so far, but the signs and directions are much more obvious now). Sure, some amount of authority is necessary, but that's mainly because people, especially children, will otherwise go for short-term pleasure without thinking about the longer term. But saying that school molds children in any way is quite a stretch in my opinion - a better way of putting it would be that it shows them different possibilities and enables them to be better informed before choosing which direction to take in life.