Schools typically sap children of a significant amount of opportunity to be responsible or take intiative in their action. They are told what time to turn up, what to wear, what to learn at what time and what aspect of that subject they should be studying for how long. A bell rings. The child must then stop that line of thought and follow another prescribed one. They are told what to eat and when to eat it and how to eat it. They are told when they can move and when they must sit still, when to talk and when to be quiet, and are conditioned into behaving like this through a system of reward and punishment.

Everyone of course needs to learn the manners and customs of behaviour in society, but it doesn't have to be done in a regimental fashion. Indeed, learning is often more fruitful when the learner feels like they are a member in the decision making process. This is turn also prevents the build-up of resentment which can manifest itself as deliberate sabotage of the very systems that they would otherwise have quite happily integrated into, had they felt a valued member of that system and not a pawn being manouvered around. Children, and later as adults, as a result of such an attitude towards their learning, automatically set about discovering how they can get reward with minimal effort and how they can get away with not being punished. It sets a standard of all the worng reasons for doing things, and it puts all onus of learning on the teacher to teach it.

Letting children follow their imagination and initiative is good for them. providing them with a s safe supportive environment to do it in, then children can continue as self-learners, which is how they started out.

Children love to discover, and in discovering they learn. By the time they get to school they have already taught themselves to speak just by listening and imitating and walk by trial and error to name just two pretty substantial examples. If children are self-learners then they learn 24/7, but when exposed  daily for year after year to a sustem that implies that learning happens only when there is a teacher and all other time is non-learning time, they become dependant on a teacher with a blackboard to learn and be told what to do (as doing the wrong thing might result in punishment) and grow up as adults with this same dependency. If we are depandent on people telling us what to do, or are conditioned to do what we are told without question, then we cannot be responsible people. If we are not responsible, then not only can we not reach our full potential, but we cannot contribute properly to our community and cannot be free, if we are always waiting on the work of another person.