That's a good response, most of which I agree with. Education should be something that is diffuse throughout cultural institutions and various social spaces, but unfortunately it's relegated to specific sites.
I have a question though:
The western institutions of lower learning were systemically created by prior churches, governments, and social scientists to yield obedient drones, not functioning individuals.
Is it not the case that a functioning member of a society is obedient to that society? I'm not condoning teaching obedience or that obedience is ultimately better; but I'm suggesting that sharply dividing along these lines misplaces the problem because in a culture as heavily politicized and legalized as ours, functioning individuals
are obedient individuals. The problem isn't in our education; rather, it's in the fact that the culture as a whole guarantees safety and functionality provided that everyone obeys.
You're right to point out that the relationships of parents/children and state/students are different. But education is only realized through institutions, whether they be the state, the private school, or the family. The efficacy of each of these may be debated, but they all qualify as institutional modes of education that all demand obedience. The differences between them doesn't matter as much in this effect. Obedience, no matter the form it takes or the way in which it's indoctrinated, must always be questioned. Parents like to think they possess some greater degree of "obedience demand"; but if we're challenging the obedience taught by the state, then we have to acknowledge that obedience taught by parents is just as objectionable.
You might say that not all education must be institutionalized: someone might hypothetically isolate themselves in the wild and teach themselves to survive. But I would suggest that this isn't "education." It's the same difference between education and learning that exists between knowledge and truth; education and knowledge are sanctioned by the overriding ideological programs and institutions, and their content is restricted in this way. Knowledge paradigms can change, but they do so gradually so that the institutions can keep up. Learning is more akin to truth, which is not institutionalized or ideological, but rather persists more as an individual relationship to the world and a means by which traditional and hierarchical organizations of knowledge can be challenged. To use Alain Badiou's phrasing, truth "interpolates itself into the continuity of the 'there is'."
