There is a myth prevalent in society, and that is in order for children to be successful later on in life, they have to go through elementary, high school, and then college, so they can go get a good job and be financially independent and be productive members of society.
That might have been true a hundred years ago, when schools were literally training centers for factories — where the basic requirement was to have someone good at following instructions, at doing repetitive work and not talking too much while at it, and not to question authority. Those especially good with numbers would be shipped off to the accounting department while those good with words became secretaries.
Many parents today still see it as their ultimate duty to let their kids finish college. They see it as the penultimate achievement of parenthood. They do so because they believe in that myth that college is the key to success in life, that in shepherding their children through college, they have given them the best preparation for adulthood.
That is the myth that has to be shattered — that school is a preparation for life.
Children in school are alive. They are living. They are already IN life, not preparing for it. It’s not as if they are swimmers doing stretches outside the pool before diving in. They are already in the water, from the moment they were born.
What we actually do in school is pluck them out of the water where they’re already swimming, and say, hang on, you’ve got to listen to some lectures first on the different kinds of strokes, or on the properties of water, or on this or that topic. And they go through this for such a long time that a lot of them forget what it is to actually be in the water and the moment you throw them back in, they start drowning.
Children are born learning, curious about the world around them. After a few years of already living, we pluck them out and put them in an artificial environment called school, where they have to sit together with other children of the same age as they are, and they are expected to do certain tasks that adults have deemed as important — never mind that they don’t find these important or interesting at all — and they are periodically tested and later on segregated because of this. Many schools still have an “honors” class for the more “advanced” students.
They have to switch from one subject to the other hour after hour, from one lesson to the next — mostly for the convenience of their teachers and school administrators. They are conditioned with reward and punishment mainly in the form of grades. They are made to follow arbitrary rules prescribing allowable haircut/hairstyle, clothes and shoes, use of makeup/jewelry, etc.
And yes, a few do survive these but most come out to be what they were programmed to be — drones, and by the time you throw them back to “life,” they start drowning.
Email me at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me.