American public schools are quite adept at teaching distrust in authority, particularly in bureaucrats. That doesn't mean distrust in everybody.
It's an important lesson to teach kids while they're young! Strange, though, how you never see it on the formal curriculum.
Unfortunately, they end up learning a different sort of hidden lesson.
In k12, while it's not really meaningful, It's still an extracurricular activity, and at the same time it shows that you can work with others (theoretically) and that people like you enough to put you there.
Unless you're in an anime. The student council in anime not only has power in the school, but outside political and military power besides.
Nope.
> and that people like you enough to put you there.
This. This is all it shows.
I wonder to what extent that property is primarily due to them being schools, or primarily due to them being public, or primarily due to them being American, or is it some combination of the three?
My own impression (having experienced both as a child) is that private schools are less prone to bureaucratic inflexibility than public ones, which is one of the reasons why my wife & I have chosen private schooling for our children. But, not the US, so our experiences may not be directly comparable.