In our society the task of training up children to be good citizens and good to themselves has to be that of parents and teachers. While some discreet legal protection is to be extended by governments and their agencies, their task is mainly to ease the difficulties that crop up in the work of parents and teachers. In the Syai society I (fictionally) write about, the task is given to the guardian (usually the dedicated parent) and to elders who have the time for it, and - very importantly - to the children themselves!
As children's understanding of the world develops, they need proper general knowledge, not myth parading as knowledge. Their critical faculties (in Syai) are developed so that they understand the limitations of knowledge and the dangers in power-relationships; also, the proper place of myth-and-story in their emotional development.
Neither the old-fashioned bullying teacher-pupil relationship nor the struggle of the teacher against some children's bad parenting - the teacher in a straight-jacket of powerlessness and governmental pressures - achieve anything but a society of "winners and losers", of predominant dissatisfaction, stress and misery.
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