Thanks for sharing. I think you're somewhat overgeneralizing from your own experience, but there's no question that experiences similar to yours are widespread

Thanks for sharing. I think you're somewhat overgeneralizing from your own experience, but there's no question that experiences similar to yours are widespread. Some school boards (and some schools, and some teachers) are better than others, but there's certainly a strong case that schools overemphasize obedience and conformity and underemphasize creativity and innovation. It's an open question whether this tendency is more related to indoctrination per se (kids are future patriots/employees/consumers who need to be conditioned for obedience) or merely to the default imperatives of a bureaucracy (kids are forms that need to be filled in properly). My anecdotal experience seems to suggest more the latter, but I live in Canada, which has somewhat more freedom of thought than the US because it doesn't matter what Canadians think. :) Sometimes it's possible for parents to address these issues from within the school system by advocating for a change in the school culture (even within a pilot program) that is more geared toward the dignity, autonomy and creativity of the children than on maximizing obedience. Others deal with it by removing their children from the school system altogether. In the US, there seem to be two more or less unrelated groups of home-schoolers: those who home-school because they want to teach their kids the universe is a few thousand years old, and those who home-school because they want to teach their kids to be creative, resourceful autodidacts. You'll find a lot of sympathy for your concerns among the latter. >I searched for the post to link it, it was +120 or so and very well received, but I couldn't find it - if anyone has a link for people who missed it, it was a very good piece You're very likely thinking of John Taylor Gatto: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_Gatto http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_Gatto Also, if you haven't already read Paul Goodman and Ivan Illich, you'll find some hefty philosophical undergirding for your skepticism about institutional schooling. By the way, do you have a blog or website? This comment is clearly essay-grade and should be read more widely than as a reply on HN.