Much as I like and respect the guy, that's all well and good coming from Michael Grant, successful author. The majority of kids are going to end up in uniformly regimented jobs and careers, and need to be prepared for that. Not everyone can be an author, more or less working for themselves and at their own pace. And if you look internationally, the countries getting the best results are the ones than operate the way schools used to, emphasizing the basics and using regimented repetition. The Asian nations all do it, the northern Europeans do it. Yeah, school stress has probably increased a bit since the 70s, but so has the world. Our systemic results with literacy and numeracy rates are lagging behind, and that's because we're trying all this alternative stuff without making sure kids are graduating knowing the basics.
As for whether a handicapped human host is more attractive to the Yeerks, I doubt it. They kind of us all as substandard anyway, a simple resource to be harnessed. Even a high-functioning human being they'd be arrogant enough to think they'd be able to squash immediately anyway.
And I think Esplin's change/evolution in personality between the Hork-Bajir World years and Earth is maybe just more an incongruous thing in the writing, or he just got more jumped-up and egotistical and careless as his power and rank grew, rather than that being anything to do with inhabiting Alloran. Alloran wasn't really a nutso dictator anyway, more just sort of prideful and paternal to the point he was playing god.
