Filip,

Thanks for the Mencken quote.
On the subject of production line education with the purpose of turning out standardised docile individuals, you might like these quotes from Alvin Toffler.
On mass education and its overt and covert curriculums:
"Mass education was the ingenious machine constructed by industrialisation to produce the kind of adults it needed....This system did not emerge instantly. Even today it retains throwback elements from pre-industrial society. Yet, the whole idea of assembling masses of students(raw material) to be processed by teachers (workers) in a centrally located school(factory) was a stroke of genius. The whole administrative hierarchy of education as it grew up followed the model of industrial bureaucracy. The very organisation of knowledge into permanent disciplines was grounded on industrial assumptions. Children marched from place to place and sat in assigned stations. Bells rang to announce changes of time.
The inner life of school thus became an anticipatory mirror, a perfect introduction to industrial society. ...It consisted - and still does in most industrial nations - of three courses: one in punctuality, one in obedience and one in rote repetitive work."

In my opinion the whole teaching; is not correct.
Some kids will go on to further education, and some are not interested.
There needs to be a split between the wis kids and the hands on kids.
The wis kids need all that education can provide.
The hands on kids need to be taught down to earth life skills at an early age.
What is the good in persisting with someone that is out of their depth and does not want to be there.
Some are born to use their hands, and some are born to be university material.
All kids will like school if they are being taught what they are interested in.
These 19 yo apprentices have gone through torture seeing out yr 12, and would be much more comfortable going into apprenticeship at age 15 , with 5 year term, and no fast lane

Filip, Poirot

I am somewhat amused by your comments.

As was discussed in another forum, it appears widespread practice for teachers in Australia to use the same exam paper year after year, and also write the same comments about students in their report cards.

In fact, different teachers can write the same comments (with exactly the same words) about the same student.

This is total standardisation, but this practice must be known by most or all teachers, with no comment from them.

However they now complain about US testing systems, and they make their complaints after spending billions of Australian taxpayer dollars on software, hardware and books from the US.

Something is very suspicious.

Last week I ventured into that last bastion of grumpy service, Australia Post, and saw an entire rack of NAPLAN testing books for sale.

I should have checked the publisher, wonder if it is one of the Murdoch empire publishers?

The teacher unions are failing, totally, to counter all this rubbish. The AEU, instead of taking a lead position, can only muster a feeble 'wet lettuce' comment every now and then.

Adding to the Mencken quote,it was Hobbes who saw the need for the Sovereign be "unchallengeable in definitional matters", which is why "the Sovereign ultimately must control the language (definitions of what is), and explains his repeated stress on the importance of education (and sovereign control over its institutions) rather than the straightforward coercion as the essential element in a successful Sovereign's rule" (Williams, M 2006 'The Hobbesian theory of international relations', in Classical Theory in International Relations, Ed. Jahn Beate, p.258. See Hobbes 'De Cive', pp.262-263.

Education has always been about 'control'.