Teaching as a subversive activity

As I was at work today, I overheard a young girl make two remarks. The first, "Why do I have to learn anything else if I want to grow up to teach first grade? I'm already in the first grade. I know everything." And the second, "I love reading; that's why I'm the smartest." I was intrigued by her logic. After all, if you want to be in the first grade, why do you need 8th grade math? So I began to think about this in terms of our reading for class. This small girl seems to have it all figured out, but she doesn't want to be in school. She doesn't think she needs to and she doesn't think that any of it applies to her. The article states that school.."is largely designed to keep students from knowing themselves and their environment in any realistic sense" (47). We are preparing students for lives they will never lead, things they will never actually use. We are giving them a "future shock." We teach them that the world is one way, and when they actually experience it, it's completely different and they are unprepared and unable to cope. So it's time to start asking the hard questions--What's worth knowing? What's worth teaching? What do I, as a teacher, need to do to make my students the best humans they can possibly be? What skills and characteristics do they need to be the best humans they can be? Who gets to make that decision?