Tbf, I don’t know of any country school system that doesn’t excessively use tests and lectures with an authoritarian teacher ruling the classroom in a command and control format.

I’m happy to be proven wrong, but at least in Central America all the public schools (including the private French, British, and international schools) all used the exact same format. My friends who went to private school in Kenya, Pakistan, South Africa, South Korea, and UK all describe the exact same format used in the US, so I expect there’s a blind leading the blind situation happening. Colonialism seems to have replicated this format nearly everywhere. And European countries seem to be all following the same format.

The only place I’ve been where this was even slightly different was in small public schools in Alaska, where the schools were extremely well funded. The class sizes were tiny, only like 6-8 students per grade. However, they were still grouped by age (mostly), and still had lectures and tests and homework. It was much less pressure on test scores but it was still there.

The human spirit is remarkably resilient and extremely difficult to fully suppress. Not every teacher agrees with the goals, many actively attempt to circumvent the system in subtle ways. Of course there’s still tests and silly rules, but they do what they can. When I was s middle school teacher I tried my best to foster a sense of wonder and intrinsic motivation wherever I could in between teaching to the state tests.

As to counselors, I ask why aren’t emotional regulation and CBT techniques taught at every age? Why do we have plenty of psychiatrists and medications but effectively no meditation and reflective journaling? When are kids taught to recognize sadness, stress, anxiety, and process that emotions in a healthy way?

There’s half hearted attempts at individualized learning plans but that mostly just turns into more time on tests and such. When are kids taught how to follow their own interests and dive deep into subjects? The first time most students get to do self-directed work is maybe research papers in later high school, if they are lucky. We treat students like children, so they act like children.

We know students do best with a mixed age class but we group them by age anyway. We know not every brain develops at the same rate, but we force them to take tests and get bad grades anyway. We have brilliant individualized adaptive learning systems like Khan Academy and yet teachers love attention and control and so give their same crappy lecture on algebra day 53 every year anyway.

It’s such a train wreck of a system you’d have to get rid of classes, grades, and forced age grouping just to get started on building something better. See the Free School movement like Sudbury Valley to find examples that have lasted for a hundred years successfully with no tests, grades, papers, or lectures.

All compatible with emancipatory pedagogy!