the School and its 'small peasants'

"I believe that the [ISA] which has been installed in the dominant position in mature capitalist social formations as a result of a violent political and ideological class struggle against the old dominant [ISA,] is the educational ideological apparatus" (Althusser 96).

Education is the most powerful tool and is the absolute basis for any sort of production or reproduction. Schools, like all other ISAs, by definition, contribute to the reproduction of the relations of production. The establishment of education/schooling has set a firm cyclical way of learning that is extremely similar and prevalent throughout the world; furthermore, it has withheld throughout several generations. "No other [ISA] has the obligatory...audience of the totality of the children in the capitalist social formation, eight hours a day for five or six days out of seven" (Althusser 97). It is scarily true that infants are literally molded into themselves by education. Whether this education stems from school, family, the Church, etc., the School is the most structured and regulated form of "providing ideology."

Although I do understand and slightly agree with Althusser's harsh rant on the educational State apparatus (page 97), I believe education is rapidly evolving now and does not always lead to supporting capitalistic ideals. In the best outcomes, education leads to the thoughts that drive one away from the "ideology which suits the role it has to fulfill in class society: the role of the exploited, [etc]" (Althusser 97). Althusser even states on page 98, "I ask the pardon of those teachers who, in dreadful conditions, attempt to turn the few weapons they can find in the history and learning they 'teach' against the ideology, the system and the practices in which they are trapped. They are a kind of hero." 

Will education ever change? Even with liberal/independent school systems, can they ever escape the omnipotent system ("which is bigger than they are and crushes them")?