Okay, if the public school system is so much like Straight, then why doesn't everyone who has been through it get what it is like to be in Straight? Because it is not like Straight. My teachers were not programming me with brainwashing tactics. If I had some control freak for a teacher, there was perspective because it was only for an hour, or because I could talk to other people about it and deal mentally. Yes the whole thing was controlling, but the difference, as I see it, is that it was not exclusive and restricting. I had access to libraries, bookstores, people and other ideas, and I did make use of these, and read about other educational philosophies, and I had space to think about the system I was in the middle of, and space to be myself emotionally and mentally. My teachers in fact welcomed my ideas and creativity. I had space and time outside of school. And I managed to cut school a whole lot and not get caught for a long time, and if my parents hadn't been so incompetent, there were other ways for me to go than that public school H.S. diploma.
I just don't think you can brainwash someone without the restriction of communication, information and private time. That is why people say things like "well gee, if you had all just misbehaved at the same time you could have closed the place down."
I didn't like the public school system then and I still don't. I get what you are driving at, I just don't think it has the same effect on the psyche, whatsoever. At least not in my experience. I had humans for teachers. Sure there is the authority role they get into, but I was free to have my own ideas and question theirs. They dismissed some of what I said, for sure, but that's okay, i could still think what I wanted.
Many of my high school classmates saw the same things I did, we talked about it, people handled it differently, but we were getting conscious of what we were in the middle of, and it was nowhere near totalitarian enough to keep us from thinking and talking about it. I even had teachers who ranted and raved on the subject, in the 9th grade even! Not at all like Staff.
Straight was a devastation, and no one who has just been through the public school system will really get it.
Yes, other people can get government control of ideas, and they can get the Drug War, and they can get the lies and manipulations of the public school system. But they do not get the thought reform and torture of Straight.