AspireChris - the "school as factory" accusation (did you ever see Pink Floyd's The Wall?) is really, really painful.
It's also true.
Most teachers KNOW there are better ways to do things, that a cookie cutter approach is only effective for a small-ish percentage of students, and that a more personalized approach would be vastly more effective.
Unfortunately, in the US (this probably applies to education in most industrialized nations) the way "the system" is set up forces a cookie cutter approach.
In the US, public education is "free," which actually means "paid for via taxes."
A portion of the money supporting schools come from the federal government, some comes from the state government, and some comes from local property taxes.
Schools in depressed areas (both rural and urban) get little from property taxes. When money for schools is needed, people in these areas often vote against them. It's fully understandable - these people are hurting for money, and don't want a tax increase, especially if they have no children in school.
The upshot is that schools in depressed areas will ALWAYS be chronically short of cash.
Money that comes from the state and federal governments depend entirely on politicians and the current political shouting.
Where I am, money for education has been steadily decreasing for the past 30 years. Yet, the cost of everything has been steadily increasing.
So the school has to constantly cut costs. Teachers cost money - get rid of a few teachers = more students in each class. More students per class means far, far more complexity for the teacher. I am mentally incapable of creating 150 individualized educational environments every 2.5 months, and following/tracking them.
That's the main problem. Schools are paid for through taxes and people resist tax increases while demanding tax decreases. This does not work.
A second problem is how much teachers are expected to teach, and how much students are expected to learn (expected by parents, politicians, and future employers).
The information I was supposed to get into children's head would be difficult for a data input specialist to enter into a computer in the time available.
And computers don't actually have to "learn" anything. Kids DO have to learn, so it takes longer. I, as a teacher, can not do what I know I have to do: teach > student practice > evaluate student learning > reteach what the evaluation shows students haven't understood adequately.
The last step in that process is the most important, also the most time consuming, and the part that requires most personalized attention. So that's the step that will be left out. The process becomes: teach, practice, test, move on. This is cookie cutter at it's worst.
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