Far from creating independent thinkers, schools have always, throughout history, played an institutional role in system of control and coercion.
And once you are educated, you have already been socialized in ways that support the power structure, which, in turn, rewards you immensely.
The major objective of a colonial education is to further de-skill teachers to walk unrefrectively through a labyrinth of procedures and techniques.
It follows, then, that what we have in place in Japan, is not a system that encourges independent thought and critical thinking.
On the contrary, our so-called democratic schools are based on an instrumental skills - banking approach that often prevents the development of the kind of thinking that enables one to "read the world" critically and to understand the reasons and linkages behind facts.
Seldom do teachers require students to analyze the social and political structures that inform their realities. Rarely are students allowed to engage in discovery and "to find the truth for themselves."
Far from engaging in the "development of independent and critical thought ," students' minds are anesthetized,
as poet John Ashbery accurately captures in "What Is Poetry?"
In school
All thoughts got combed out
What was left was like a field.