Large systems, like a school system, develop rules and procedures that help guarantee the continued existence of the system itself. The overt stated goals (eg "provide a quality education") eventually become secondary to this fundamental driving principle (eg "make sure there is a school system for us to go to tomorrow").

My children attend a Montessori public school here if the Netherlands. So such a thing is certainly possible. Though the Montessori principles may have been watered down a bit to comply with state demands - I'm not really sure as I don't have any comparison points outside of our public system.

Montessori schools are super structured. They are not unstructured in any meaning of the word.

As far as I know, which is admittedly not much, unstructured play as a mean of nurturing a child's independence, self-reliance, and creativity in a central tenet of Montessori.

From the point of view of the institution, a consistent approach is usually preferable. In general it’s not a given that it’s a desirable goal. Depending on your ideological and political stances.

I don't think many people want to send their kids to a crap shoot.

Life is a crap shoot. Trying to control and streamline it can have very harmful effects.

>Large systems, like a school system, need rules and procedures that help guarantee a relatively consistent outcome.

But is that really true? For one thing, you can have a fail-over mechanism if something isn't working. For another, we already do: it's called special education. That's before we get to the part where "consistent outcomes" are not a feature of the current system, unless you impose a very low standard of 'consistency'.

Yeah - I agree. Large centralized institutions do tend to work this way, but it's not a requirement, although it's always a struggle to keep the administration from pushing this route because it's easier even though it gives poorer outcomes.

Which is funny, because unstructured exploratory learning by definition increases diversity of thought, but diversity isn’t the goal of large industrial systematic systems.