Turning Learning Right Side Up: Putting Education Back on Track

6. Factors That Resist Change

You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself—educating your own judgments. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.

—Doris Lessing

Teachers, like employees of any system, try to ensure their job security. They do so in the educational system by requiring students to be taught the subjects they, the teachers, know. Required courses in different ...