Scientific research eventually being proved incorrect -- that means it works, it's supposed to change and grow. But, when you involve people who are too arrogant to explore anything outside of their bias (calling themselves scientists,) forcing it onto the world-- and other people ready to lap up any "scientific fact" because it saves them from having to think, then we have a problem... but that's more of a social failing than that of the philosophy.
Pulling this back on topic, I've changed schools six times -- and, hmm... I think it depends on the school and the people running it. I've been through mounds of rote-learning and suffered through Lord-of-the-Flies social tangles that the very people I'd turn to for guidance and mediating authority acted oblivious to -- even joined in on (that will eventually be a funny story, I keep telling myself.) Thankfully I've also been to one school that taught me critical thinking, social graces by example and reinforcement, and with teachers who'd take it as a personal insult rather than a favor if I didn't do my work (as it should be, I belatedly realized.) Unfortunately, that last school was the most expensive and it did literally make us poor.
I think a lot also depends on the student -- where even the teachers hated me, I've had classmates say it held the fondest memories of their life. In the place I loved, we still had hooky-players and druggies or just average students complaining about teachers I idolized and the quality of facilities I never knew a high school could have -- if you just don't find fulfillment in an environment incompatible to you, you don't, you know.
I don't think there's a cut-and-dry improvement formula that will work for every unique individual -- I loathed this one health class that had a study of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People conducted with a passion usually reserved for the study of the Qu'ran, so please please let's keep the self-help SELF-help until we figure out the difference between "education" and "brainwashing"! I've experienced individual class schedules as able to allow for individual pacing, the pursuit of individual interests (you can choose the subjects you want to fill the quota,) and the break down cliquishness -- but a classmate said she'd find it isolating (different classmates for every class,) a teacher said it would encourage truancy, and I've been confused by the mid-semester timetable change and missed a couple of classes that one year but that may just be because I was unused to it.
On the other hand, I should probably note that I'm currently a 19-year-old home-schooling 10th grader. There was some psychological kerfuffle...
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