Scrum! It teaches bad teams good habits!

Nothing in scrum stops you talking to anyone at any time. The stand-up makes sure that you have to say a few words to the whole team and other interested parties, daily.

I like to read criticisms of scrum, when they're not straw-man ones.

How was the parent a straw-man? He suggested that teams that can't talk to each other without the prodding of Scrum are dysfunctional (which I happen to agree with). That's not even necessarily a criticism of Scrum, it just points out that Scrum can be good for teams that, as you say, have bad habits.

I didn't mean it as a straw-man criticism, just an observation that scrum is very rigid and prescriptive; it's all about the what and the how instead the why.

I'm a big believer in trying to persuade people to keep feedback loops short, make teams small and cross-functional, and to design/code/test/ship in the smallest increments possible. At this point, calling an approach agile/scrum/xp carries a lot of baggage.

If people don't get the why (e.g. the team isn't small and cross-functional, and people aren't working on tiny increments) it kind of doesn't matter if you get everyone in the room at the same time every day.