"The point of education is to produce minds that are capable of critical thinking and inventive ideas".

These are the words of a public school headmaster in the 1960s.  Would that the system lived up to those ideals.  Unfortunately, today's school system is all about conformity and memorising.

Those who have the audacity to present their own ideas or theories are generally belittled.  Many teachers loathe pupils who are smarter than they are and they see all 'original' thinking as dangerously undermining of their authority.  Again, potential is wasted.  Thinking for yourself should be actively encouraged.  In my experience, young people are as inventive as anyone when given half the chance to show that side of themselves without mockery.

Socrates was forced to kill himself for 'corrupting the youth of Athens'. He had encouraged the youth to question everything - a cardinal sin then as it is now.

As far as the authority in school is concerned, to question might mean to question the status quo, the nature of school and how unjust the whole system is.  Thus conformity rules the generations and change always comes from the minority on top rather than growing organically from the majority below, for whom school, after all, ostensibly exists.

Peter Ustinov told a true story about the time he re-visited his old school, Westminster. He was shown his housemaster's report book and the comment next to his name read:

 'This boy displays great originality, which must be curbed at all costs!'