He saw the best kind of teaching as "self-subverting authority" -- that is, a type of temporary authority he supported, since its goal is ostesibly/should be to subvert and thus end the relationship. In other words, the teacher ideally imparts to students knowledge, or the means to that knowledge, that elevates the student to the teacher's level, erasing the initial discrepancy between the two. I'm probably explaining it clumsily, but I hope you get my drift.
On the other hand, students do often have good reasons for challenging the authority of the school system at large, and it's sometimes legitimate. Sometimes it's not. Free and compulsory education for youth, as opposed to child labor, is something humanitarians, the left, and the labor movement have historically fought for. Kids ought to get it. The means by which this education is delivered is another issue. If the free & compulsory schooling the left and labor movements fought for ends up cynically just a factory to produce readymade worker-drones, then that doesn't seem so great, either.
I think Chomsky's old litmus test of opposing "illegitimate authority," as opposed to authority per se, applies. Of course, which authority is legitimate, and which authority is not legitimate -- well, there's the rub.
-B.
Miles Jackson wrote:
"Simple thought experiment: what if all children didn't learn anything or do any homework because they wanted to 'challenge the teacher's authority'? We'd just end up with a nation of illiterates! There are, I grudgingly admit, good reasons for hierarchical relations in some social settings; however, there is no reason why these positions of authority must be held by a small, select group of "executives" or 'experts.'"