Comment by mrcsd

Whether school is a net benefit (that can stand to be improved) or a net detriment (a system that needs to be uprooted and upended entirely) depends significantly on that "some significant percentage".

If the percentage is 10% of children suffering through school, that's a horrendous number, but still leaves school as an overall positive experience for the vast majority, even though significant work needs to be put it to fix its problems.

If the percentage is 50% of children suffering, then it's a crapshoot if your child will benefit or be deeply disturbed by school, and the whole system needs to be torn down and rebuilt from scratch.

One anecdotal experience can't help one decide which of these is the right approach. I'd venture a guess that, since most people are not clamoring for fundamental school system reforms, the experience of most voting adults has been largely positive or at least neutral in school.

The author paints a picture of schools as literal prison, as a place where children are forced to go to waste their time and be tortured. They invite the reader to conclude that the entire exercise is worthless and should be abandoned -

"Education? You probably mean repeating exercises in rote? You likely mean memorisation? That’s not education."

"I find it hard to think of school as anything more than forced internment for children while their parents go to work, with exercises designed to keep you busy more than to give a functional understanding. "

> why on earth should a conclusion about school _not_ be drawn?

It depends on the conclusion. If the conclusion is "school as a concept is so irredeemably bad that we should scrap schools entirely because of my experiences", I'm not sure it's supportable because of the lack of universality.

If the conclusion is "some schools have been run so poorly that students are left with lifelong emotional scars and little education to show for it, we need to do something about that", I'm all onboard.