Typically insightful piece from Joseph Moore of Yard Sale of the Mind:

Question: how did we all get so inured to bullying so described, such that probably a good 70% of us just go along no matter what. How did we come to even try to put up with bullying, rather than fighting back at square one? How come I, who have never for a moment bought any of the Coof madness, still try to work around the rules rather than simply refusing?

In the off chance that a new reader has wandered in, here we go: We learned to tolerate bullying, to even accept it as normal and good, in school. Not the bullying of the big kid who wants your lunch money – that may or may not be tolerated by the ‘educators’ – but the bullying that is used to make us comply, on the one hand, and to create emotional cripples on the other.

John Taylor Gatto, who spent 30+ years as a public school teacher in New York, pointed out that the kids who are most unmanageable, who simply will not do what the school wants them to do, are those who have been unconditionally loved at home – a very small portion of students, it turns out. Such kids, unused to being simply bossed about, unused to demands being made on them with no regard paid to what they might want or what might be reasonable, do not respond well to schooling. The graded classroom model is nothing if not arbitrary. Grades segregated by age? Why? Performing to ‘grade level’? Double why? I have to raise my hand to get permission to go to the restroom? Why? I have to study what you tell me to study exactly when you tell me study it, and stop exactly when you tell me to stop? Why? Why can’t I just keep going if I’m interested, or do something else fi I’m not? Recess? Why? Why can’t I take a break when I need it? Why does a bell trump whatever I happen to be interested in at the moment?

The kid who simply misbehaves is nothing to compare to the kid who doesn’t accept the premise that doing whatever the local adult tells him to do is some sort of divine commandment to be accepted without question. Such a kid not only can calmly question his parents (who unconditionally love him, remember) and express displeasure without any withdrawal of affection, but is used to reasonable, affectionate compliance, not blind, arbitrary demands.

Recommend you read the rest and then peruse some of his other posts on the insanity that is our education system. Mr. Moore is one of the better and more thorough adepts at pointing out the elephants in that particular room.