I saw a thread elsewhere recently which was heavily critical of the idea of school as in institution, and where some people were directly comparing teachers to cops (one guy even compared them to death camp guards). That seems silly to me, as police obviously have far more power over both adults and children than do teachers, but it's made me wonder if there is some kind of leftist line of thinking when it comes to education which I'm unaware of. Defenders of the idea of school, such as myself, definitely seemed to be in the minority.
I have a feeling most of the people in that thread were American zoomers, which might go some way to explaining things. Maybe anarchists have different thoughts about this than MLs and the like too?
What do you guys think?
Edit: A lot of interesting responses here, and I'm glad to see that people are broadly in favour of education and sympathetic to teachers. Actually, a book I have - but haven't read (tsundoku be damned) - which some people here may find interesting is The Ignorant Schoolmaster by Jacques Ranciere, and I'll have to read Pedagogy of the Opressed and Education to Govern one day too.
Education and schools are good.
There's a chapter in Stasi State or Socialist Paradise? that covers the GDR's contribution to progressive education and how it's still the best model. Many other revolutionaries fought and died to build schools.
A lot of criticism I see about schools is on the level of the "bedtime" discourse where terminally contrarian lefties like to out-radical one another.
I'm reminded of when parenti talks about being accused of being a conspiracist and people ask, "you really think there's a group of people who meet in a room to make all the important decisions" and parenti responds, "well, yeah, they gotta meet somewhere"
If you want to educate an entire population, you might have to gasp meet in the same geographical place at the same time. It might also be mandatory, which, I know, is so authoritarian.
By all means, talk about how much schools currently suck, but the concept itself isn't going anywhere under socialism.
Stasi State or Socialist Paradise is really good. Rather than writing an apologia for the GDR they just talk about projects and ideas that were successful, something you more or less never hear about.
There's a really funny annecdote where a bunch of post-wall german educators go to finland or something to find out why finnish schools are so successful and the finns are like "what are you dorks talking about we just copied what the gdr was doing".
It also talks extensively about how during the reunification/conquest of east germany the entire east german education system was dismantled and the entire east german community of professors and teachers was thrown out in to the streets with predictably disastrous results.