Education in foraging cultures is hardly distinguishable from everyday life, and the notion that education should be standardized and formalized and fitted with scientifically verified outcome-based procedures would be entirely incoherent.
Formal education as it occurs in modern civilization has two overarching purposes: psychological reprogramming and behavioral standardization. A civilized life is above all a domesticated one, one in which thought and behavior need to be channeled and directed away from natural proclivities and toward goals that no one would ever consider pursuing otherwise. And it is also necessary to train children in the many specific skills and habits of thought necessary to interface with the complex technological and bureaucratic systems of global civilization.
The question every child is asked multiple times starting at a very young age, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” is a psychological booby-trap. It offers the child a standardized palette of options from which to choose; the child is expected to assume future aspirations that correspond to a limited number of stereotypical occupations (doctor, farmer, teacher, astronaut, fireman, dog groomer, etc.); it prepares them for their own inescapable objectification.
This simple and seemingly innocuous question contains invasive spores that can grow into a vine that strangles the child’s uniqueness. It also firmly embeds the idea that the child is not sufficient in what they are right now, that they are somehow imperfect, unformed, that their present being is somehow deficient.
This idea will be cultivated and reinforced and solidified over and over again until it becomes a durable feature of their adult psyche, an open union joint for easy attachment to the machine.