I think the process of schooling does varying amounts of harm to many students. It also of course does a lot of good. Too many students are led to believe they are incapable of learning, and even many successful students are damaged because they develop a performance focus which reduces their effectiveness as learners. Instead of focussing on improving skills, focus on reducing harm so students will be more willing to put effort into learning.
One form of damage I see teachers cause is to be ungenerous in their dealings with students. They assume students will try to be difficult or cause trouble or know less than they really do. They don't trust students and think that making them feel bad about themselves will spur them on. I see no evidence that any of this is functional or effective. Over the last few years, I have helped my school take a gentler approach to student discipline, which has resulted in a more relaxed and happy school. Recently I tried to characterise this apporach in terms of a professional responsibility, which I termed 'generous realism' . The point being that the first response to a student (or colleague or boss) in any situation is to be generous. This does not mean that one shouldn' countenance the possibility that the other person will cause trouble, just that it isn't necessary to expect it till it happens. This applies even to judging or assessing students. All judgements have some subjectivity in matching scores or results with a final judgement of 'how good'. Looking for what a student can do rather than what they can't do yields a more generous decision, usually resulting in a more confident learner. In this case, being generous in initial judgements based on realistic measurements is more productive than pessimistic decisions on the same data.
NOTE I am not saying to be unrealistic in judgements just to choose generosity given all the evidence rather than a more negative approach, hence the term generous realism.
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