I agree with Wyldcat's general idea about the spirit-sapped children. I hate to be a pessimist but I don't see it changing anytime soon. For differnt reasons in different area and socio-economic groups, it seems as though the schools have "taken over" the care of the kids, not just education but character development, fitness, health...things that would have traditionally been the responsibility of the family structure, and the kids were in school to actually learn things like their own language, maybe another, history, geography, literature, arithmetic and mathmatics. To be honest, my grandparents and great-grandparents came out of 6th-9th grade, whatever the case, with more knowledge of world history and geography, command of the English language (spoken and written) and in some cases another language as well, arithmetic to run a household budget and more advanced math as well, poetry, music, literature...and these were the "poorer" kids who were expected to start working full time at age 13-15 and never go to college or university!!!
Where I live, too many parents have a "dump and run" approach, even expecting their child to get their morning snack from the charity of the teacher making sure there is something for them in the classroom, when in fact they can afford to fly to Disney World a couple of times per year and drive really nice cars etc. It sort of morphs into the school, having so much responsibility for these kids, taking on an attitude that your child is a ward of the state or the district when you send them there, and if you're the sort of parent that looks to the school more or less for the academic education of your child and you feel that you will take care of the rest, you're in the majority.
Add that to all the mandates and assessments and constant changes of those everything is formula-ized and packaged up and same-y. The more conformity the easier it is for the teachers and administrators to knock off all the requirements.
I don't see enough people taking a stand any time soon, they're just too busy and as long as they see the school accommodating their children's needs they wouldn't join up to demand a higher quality education or critical thinking, individualism, etc.
That's just what I see and strictly my opinion.
