The Little Red Schoolbook

Timetables can also be worked out so that pupils are divided not according to their ages but according to individual progress in each subject (but see Streaming, page 88).

If you have to do as you’re told all the time, all you learn is to be obedient and not to question things. You learn not to think.

Instead of helping you develop as an individual, schools have to teach you the things our economic system needs you to know. They have to teach you to obey authority rather than to question things, just as the exam system encourages you to conform, not to be an individual. And teachers and others who are against this system can’t do much about it on their own

Everybody wants to find out about things. Education should teach you how to find out about the things you need to know and give you the opportunity of developing your own particular talents and interests to the full.
The trouble is that few people really know how to do this. Those who do know, or at least have some good ideas, are not the people who actually control the education system. The system is controlled by the people who have the money, and directly or indirectly these people decide what you should be taught and how.