Robin Hansen has been writing a lot about the purpose of school. The main thrust of his theory is that "school functions in part to help folks accept workplace domination"
I was thinking about this framework when I read an article on the four day school week (HT: Anthony). The author found that many rural schools have had to shorten their school weeks to save money. The twist is that after moving to a 4 day school week, academic scores do not actually suffer. In certain cases, test scores, attendance and the graduation rate all improved. If schooling is more about teaching students to accept status differentials as opposed to the school's stated purpose of imparting knowledge, attending school probably requires a substantial amount of willpower from the students. This is likely stressful for students, so lowering the days spent in school could leave enough residual willpower for many of the marginal students to focus on the actual school work rather than merely avoiding discipline.
This is not a win-win scenario for everyone. Many teachers would not like a shorter work week if they had to take a lower salary, parents would have to find babysitters and the children of ambitious parents would probably have extra structured activities similar to school on that free day. Still, it would be interesting to see what would happen if a shorter school week became more common.