[fennecfoxen]

> There are places where the relationship isn't that of a boss with their boot on their employees' neck.

Indeed! However, school isn't exactly one of those places. If anything, it's designed to prepare people for that corporate life and to be cogs in that machine. I refer to the explicit population-management goals of the founders of modern education in the US — figures such as Horace Mann, Barnas Sears, W.R. Harper, and Edward Thorndike.