The problem with education, in Ireland at least, is that it is not education at all. History is the best example of this. As you might have guessed, a lot of stuff has happened in the course of mankind's history, and not all of the facts can be told. Only a subset can be presented to you, and this subset of facts are relative to your culture, carefully arranged to initiate you into your society's perspective of the world.
I have since learned that many things in our history books are tainted this way. Columbus "discovering" America, the invention of the printing press, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Irish perspective on British oppression. I began to realise this when I picked up a history book used in British schools, which leaves out all of the atrocities committed against the Irish, and only discusses IRA bombs in England etc, and these events in turn are conveniently excluded from the Irish texts. China and Japan have similar differences in their textbooks concerning the Second Sino-Japanese War. Later on, I was amazed to discover how many Britons still believe that Ireland is still a part of Britain.
In school we studied Yeats for two years, and NEVER was his drug use, induced visions, automatic writing or his work with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn mentioned. The work we were presented with was a watered down collection of nature poems and history lessons. No wonder I never enjoyed his work until now. English texts such as Catcher in the Rye are prescribed to "help" the pupil to negotiate the chasm between childhood and adulthood, or in other words to destroy any remaining teenage dreams of bucking the system. The aim is to defeat the student and to make him into a fine-upstanding-citizen.
And so, what we call education is not education at all. Education is Indoctrination.
What is the nature of this system, and who are the perpetrators?
It is the fault of many to attribute This system is self-perpetuating, accelerated now and brought to the brink in the last 200 years by the industrial revolution. Industrial society requires progress and competition to survive, and so it needs X amount of mathematicians and Y amount of engineers to continue. This is why those who are not predisposed to maths are made to suffer through it far beyond their level of ability in the subject.
Exam results in Ireland are so competitive now that some college courses have have hit the maximum 600 points, meaning that if a student got A1s in all subjects (quite a feat), they still might not qualify for their course. Doing reasonably well in the Leaving Certificate exam means cramming facts into your head for 8 to 10 solid hours per day for months. Many people do not cope well with the stress, and some students suffer illness from stress, or mental breakdown (I'm on that list). There is an exam-related suicide every one or two years. This is either accepted or ignored by society, I'm not sure which.
This is the climatic ending to Irish education, which has condemned children to sit quietly in dull classrooms all day for 13 years, when they should have been outside playing and learning. The perpetrators are those who have gone through the same process/system that you are going through. In systematic terms, it is positive feedback. In plain english, the prisoners build the prison. And the more time you spend listening, complying and attending school, the more the infectious process of conditioning (grown-up word for brainwashing) takes over you.