Eric, have you got fundamental difficulties with the idea of education? With the fact that there are social aspects to education?
I thought that was obvious a while back (i.e., before the real world imposed so inconsiderately on my internet time).
That a horde of "psychologists" and "educational experts" make good careers and a lot of money from this whole business is undeniable, but this doesn't mean that their theories are sound. IMO, education is one of the fields where the emperor (i.e, the fashionable elite) truly has no clothes.
That is finally the problem, then, isn't it? It is, furthermore, a problem across the board for children today. If they do not conform in intellect, outlook, and behavior to certain "norms," then parents can receive all manner of useful pills and services for Junior or Janie from the same experts who establish the norms. Were it not clothed in "science" and were most people not terrified that their children aren't going to be successful at life (though deriving that conclusion from a six-year-old's behavior seems perverse), I think most folks would call this system a "racket."