Well, this thought occurred to me a long time ago, but I have been somewhat reluctant to express it, as it is difficult on many levels--difficult to explain without alienating people, difficult to accept, difficult to prevent the analogy from being taken too far. However, I think it is an accurate description of what goes on in mathematics (and other) education, and I think it is worth working through the difficulty if it can help the situation.
I have argued at length, here and elsewhere, that mathematics is, in its natural state, a pleasurable activity, one that people would engage in enthusiastically and entirely voluntarily if it were presented correctly (or, perhaps more accurately, "if it were not presented incorrectly"). That statement on its own requires proof, but take it as given for a moment, and ask yourself this--what do we call it when we take an activity which is normally pleasant and very much desirable, and force someone to engage in that activity against their will?
Well, one thing we call that is "rape". In this case, I would call it something like "subject rape" or "topic rape". It's not a happy thing to think about. It's not something we want to think of ourselves as having been complicit in. However, growing and changing as human beings often requires painful self examination, and in my opinion it's high time we asked these kinds of hard questions about mathematics (and other) education.
Does it seem like an extreme position? Frankly, I have often wished the idea would go away. But the more I think about it the more I am convinced that it brings up a lot of valid points. For example, we are not surprised when victims of sexual abuse subsequently have various sexual dysfunctionalities. Given their experience, we can't really expect anything different. If you look at how people feel about mathematics, it's a very similar situation. As a tutor, for example, I would frequently see people who were completely capable of the reasoning required for a given topic, but who had so much anxiety about it that they were unable to perform without great difficulty. This is in fact so commonly observed that they have named it. Do a search for "Math Anxiety" and see how extensively it has been discussed.
If we saw a society that had institutionalized sexual "training" of children against their will, we would react with outright horror and disbelief. The society would probably defend itself by pointing out that sexuality is an important and necessary part of life and they are only doing what is best for the children, even if the children are not mature enough yet to understand that it is for the best. Besides, if they don't do this in school, how will the children learn it?
I recently found that Daniel Greenberg of the Sudbury Valley School had (very eloquently) expressed similar ideas in an essay called "Back to Basics":
http://www.sudval.org/05_onli_09.html#02
In particular, he describes learning as a natural, human drive that will take place without our intervention. This is obvious to anyone who watches an infant grow up, and as Daniel points out, a great deal of the effort of parenting is aimed at protecting your house, property, and the children themselves from their insatiable desire to learn.
Sadly, the analogies keep coming. Why do we think we need to do this to kids? Quite possibly, the answer to that is "because it was done to us", something we also see in the realm of sexual abuse.
On a similar vein, we could ask what happens to people who are not subjected to this treatment? And the answer is most definitely "nothing bad", and with a little effort I'm sure we could do some kind of definitive study that would find that for most people it's significantly positive. They learn the math they need when they need it. You may think "But learning math is so hard! It takes so long! You couldn't get it just-in-time!". What I'm saying is, that's what you think about math because of the way it was forced on you.
If you were allowed to discover it on your own, or if you were allowed to get as much as you wanted (but no more) as it came up for you as a natural interest, I don't think you would think that. You would find it a fascinating field that you enjoy every time you dip into it.
Now, as I said above, there is some danger in taking the analogy too far. Engaging in math with a minor is not a bad thing :). It should not be considered "predatory" to present kids with engaging mathematical activities in the hopes that they will enjoy it and want to pursue it on their own.
Sexuality is so basic and important to us as human beings that abuse in that domain is infinitely more horrific than the "field of study" realm. You could definitely argue that calling math education as it is currently practiced "math rape" just says too much, because it invokes the much greater horror of sexual abuse. That is, in fact, the main reason that I am hesitant to bring it up. I would not want to diminish or be insensitive to the ordeal that victims of that kind of abuse have endured, nor do I want people to feel guilt as if they had inflicted anything like that on their children or their students.
However, even considering these dangers, I think the analogy is too useful to be ignored, and my belief is that it will help clarify or at least more clearly frame some aspects of the debate about forced education in general.