Others criticize the forced contact in school and are of the opinion that school makes children spend a large part of their most important development phase in a building, in seclusion from society, exclusively with children in their own age group, seated and entrusted with the task of obeying the orders of one authority figure for several hours each day, while almost everything they do is assessed, which would be a dehumanizing experience.
[11] Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote in his book Emile: or, On Education (first published in 1762) that all children are perfectly designed organisms, ready to learn from their surroundings so as to grow into virtuous adults, but due to the malign influence of corrupt society, they often fail to do so.
Rousseau advocated an educational method which consisted of removing the child from society—for example, to a country home—and alternately conditioning them through changes to environment and setting traps and puzzles for them to solve or overcome.
He claims that schooling confuses teaching with learning, grades with education, diplomas with competence, attendance with attainment, and, especially, process with substance.
He claims that forced schooling perverts the victims' natural inclination to grow and learn and replaces it with the demand for instruction.
[14] Forced schooling has been used to forcibly assimilate Native Americans in the United States and Canada, which some have said is cultural genocide.
[17][18][19] There are many factors that can cause schooling to be source of stress and depression in a person's life, which can have long-term health effects[20][21] and mental disorders.
[24][25] Academic pressure and rigorous schooling has been pointed to as a cause of the high rate of suicide among South Korean adolescents.
[40] Alternate forms of schooling, such as the Sudbury model, have been shown to be sufficient for college acceptance and other western cultural goals.
[46][47][48] In the eyes of many critics, memorization and pure reproduction of formulas, facts, knowledge, etc., as is usually required by many schools, is no longer up to date in times of rapid information procurement via the Internet.