The tragedy of many educational systems is that they don't teach children how to think for themselves.
The sign of a good teacher is that the students walk away with what education is all about. I would go even further to say that life is all about thinking for oneself. If you don't learn how to think and as a consequence don't understand why and who you are what you are, then you really miss the boat.
In my conversation with Dr. Dyson-Bruce yesterday, she said to me that as a student of art she would be a challenge to her teachers. The reason was because she raised the bar with respect to what she wanted to hear in the classroom. Her point was that she did not want the teacher to tell her what they mostly felt the responsibility to tell her, but to tell her more. "Teacher! I can get that from a book. What I want from you is something that I can't get from a book!"