Authority Issues - Parents

Not everyone likes the idea of free choice in education. The system itself, and those in power within the system, are opposed to change.  But things get more interesting when we consider the parents.  I intentionally don't discuss the main subjects - the pupils - because they don't have much influence over their circumstances.  The parents send their children to be "educated" by the education establishment.  In general, they are not sure what "educated" is:  Is it being taught facts?  Skills?  Values?  But - again - in general they know their kids don't get a good "education."  Most parents know that the classrooms, teachers, materials and messages their kids are subjected to at school, are extremely similar to those the parents were subjected to during their school years. These parents have every reason to believe that this education is not very relevant to their kids.  They can remember that the experience of being a pupil is quite negative, and doesn't have much to do with learning facts, skills or values.  Many complain.  A few make extreme efforts to save the children - take them to expensive alternative school, opt for home schooling, or just go to another county, state or country, looking for a better school.  Some try to improve conditions in their kids' existing school.  But many parents just accept the situation, and quite a few even support the current state of affairs in the mass education system.

Now, this whole post is based on the understanding developed in the past 100 or so posts, that the industrial education system is damaging to children, and that it doesn't take an exceptionally keen eye to see it.  This makes the last group of people - parents who support the current mass education system and oppose changes to it - a very interesting group.  What makes them side and identify with an establishment that victimizes their beloved children, and - through the children - themselves?
I don't have a very clear answer, but I have a few thoughts and associations:

• Real socialist ideology.  The idea that I shouldn't be better off than others.  Very rare, but I did see it once.
• Real anti-socialist ideology:  "My kids will be okay, and I don't want the rest to have a better education."  Very rare, but I did see it a few times.
• Stockholm syndrome.  That amazing phenomenon, where hostages empathize with their captors.
• House of God.  A book by Samuel Shem, a large proportion of which discusses how Medical Doctors forget and deny how absolutely horrible their internship was.
• Fatalism.  Lack of belief one has any power over their own circumstances.  Low expectations.  AKA "accepting reality"
• Fear of the unknown.  Preferring the familiar devil.  Sometimes centered around what may happen if the changes will give a certain group of "others" more freedom, that those others may abuse.
• Fear of the responsibility and of tough choices.
• The wish to be taken care of.  Wanting someone to know, to have perceived certainty, to have perceived stability.  Unwillingness confront the fact that we live steeped in uncertainty.  Unwillingness to believe the state doesn’t know how to do it, like many people believe in the medical doctors, lawyers, economists.  This may be the saddest.

Not very flattering, but did I ever promise to flatter anyone?