Stop Stealing Dreams (what is school for?) - Seth Godin

contract, once its contents have been formulated by a business
firm, is used in every bargain dealing with the same
product or service. The individuality of the parties which so
frequently gave color to the old type of contract has disappeared.
The stereotyped contract of today reflects the impersonality
of the market.... Once the usefulness of these contracts
was discovered and perfected in the transportation,
insurance, and banking business, their use spread into all
other fields of large scale enterprise, into international as well
as national trade, and into labor relations.
School offers the same contract. Every student walking through the doors of the
public school is by default entering into a contract of adhesion (and so are her
guardians or parents). In Texas, the contract even includes tickets and fines for
students as young as ten years old (and if they aren’t paid by the time the student
is eighteen, he goes to jail).
Beyond the draconian, barbaric frontier schooling techniques in Texas, though,
we see a consistent thread running through most of what goes on in school. The
subtext is clear: “Hey, there are a lot of kids in this building. Too many kids, too
many things on the agenda. My way or the highway, son.”
Precisely what a foreman would say to a troublesome employee on the assembly
line. Not what a patron would say to a talented artist, though.