I think that depends which person at the school you ask. I am married to a low-income neighborhood high school English teacher and we talk curriculum often. Seems to me that it's about striking a balance: One side is what you said, the other side is teaching students to unite against that authority in productive ways.
Too far in one direction, and you wind up with a society where none of the competent people you know have enough faith in the system to run for office. Too far in the other direction and the dominant class sees the everyone else as a threat and puts walls up.
It's a difficult balance to strike, but I know a lot of teachers that work very hard at finding it.
I want to make it clear that my thought is that the first authority to submit oneself to or to follow is actually the school. Even if the school puts emphasis on critical thinking you won't have a place in it if you don't submit to its authority.
Either it's a consequence of not teaching critical thinking or a reason we don't teach it is up to debate but the results remain.
Oh, I have an opinion about that:
Well. First and above all the first purpose of school and high school is to learn to follow authority (edit: authority in every other meanings. Tthe first authority to submit oneself to is the school). This is the first brick and if it's not assimilated in a way that suits the school the student will get thrown out of the system.
A century ago there's the industrial revolution mantra: produce workers who can read and understand semi-complex or complex instructions in written and oral forms and manipulate tools (typewriters, screwdrivers, hydraulics, mechanics, machines, etc.).
And now there's the "learn to learn" mantra because few things taught in the 'regular', 'normal' or 'general' school and high school cursus land jobs in the post-industrial and the information societies. Does not seem to apply to trade schools.