by Montalk
28 June 2004
from
Montalk
Website
Spanish version
Advice for Anyone Still in School.
How The Public Education System
is Rigged to Turn Individuals Into
Automatons.
"School sucks"
Most students will agree, and many have voiced their disgust concerning this
abomination we call public education. They spite the good students who obey
like little sheep, frown at imposed conformity, and laugh at the
hypocritical nature of the system.
The same will be done here, but there is a big difference between these
defiant students and me, the author. I was one of those good little sheep. I
graduated high school with a 4.0, perfect attendance record, two years of
student council under my belt, and a host of top scholarships to get me
through college.
Teachers loved me, students both feared and respected me,
and the principal knew me better than I knew him.
It’s enough to make you sick. I know it made me sick. So here I am, biting
the hand that feeds because it’s been feeding nothing but propaganda and
sour grapes.
I’m not writing this article because of envy or spite against
system-indoctrinated valedictorians, nor am I trying to put blame on my
school for all my academic failures. In fact, I cannot because I was that
valedictorian and had few if any academic failures.
I’m writing this article because the system itself is messed up. Having been
to many different public school systems over the past 15 years, I have more
than adequate credibility to make this claim.
What is taught is random, useless, and meaningless
In class, too much time is wasted on useless topics.
The quality of
education has been sacrificed for quantity, and as a result, academic
inflation and the devaluation of information has turned intellectual
ambition into apathy and bright minds into gray mush.
In an effort to be multicultural and eclectic, class curricula have become
shallow and disorganized in their effort to teach students a global
viewpoint. Topics are taught piecemeal, and never do teachers spend time to
help students integrate the pieces into a coherent picture that can be used
or built upon. And even if within a class the ideas are put together,
between classes the grand education still remains compartmentalized.
For example, both geometry and physics can be mastered by the average
student, but the connection and communication between the two often are not.
When physics is taught in a junior high or high school physics class, it
involves only the most elementary of geometry concepts, and vice versa.
Without synthesis of the two, each remains without purpose or effectiveness.
Such synthesis between topics is neglected in the school curriculum, and
consequently one’s experience in the public education system becomes a vague
memory of random, meaningless, and useless facts, just as a disassembled
engine is just a junk heap of random metal parts.
Most school subjects themselves aren’t even real knowledge.
History books
are full of purposely engineered inaccuracies and distortions
for the sake
of corporate gain and political correctness.
Much of school is wasted time
The purpose of education is to make one an independent, competent thinker,
one who can make a difference in the world for the better, and one who has
the best chance for survival and success in the world.
So what the hell are we doing with such profundity of pep rallies, football
and basketball games, proms, crazy hair days, sex education, death
education, quiz bowls, and student council meetings?
Sure, without them, school would be dull.
But, school is supposed to be an
incubator of young humans to prepare them for excitement in the real world.
School is doing more than it’s supposed to and has instead become a
surrogate provider of such excitement, turning it artificial and socially
harmful. Is your vacuum cleaner also supposed to do the dishes, trim your
hair, balance your checkbook, and be your Friday night date?
So much in school concerns extracurricular activities that time which could
be spent on real world activities is instead being wasted in these
trivialities. The effect is the amassing of students dependent upon the
system and isolated from the real world. Social, financial, and academic
dysfunction result.
Once again, quantity over quality has prevailed, because
there is no profit for the supplier in quality. Quality only helps those in
the demand, but when consumers of education have themselves been dumbed down
to primal levels, discernment and appreciation of quality disappear.
Despite these problems, almost everyone is happy.
Parents are happy. Moms get to watch their soap operas and dads get to work
while their kids are being babysat. They don’t have to worry about teaching
morality or ethics to their children because it’s being done for them in
school.
They don’t have to entertain them or spend genuine time with them
because these children are too busy being entertained in school functions.
Moms just have to drive their girls to soccer practice, and dads toss the
football a few times.
Perfectionist parents keep their child competitive not
by guiding them and helping them on a daily basis, but by yelling them once
a school quarter when report cards come out.
Teachers are happy, as they have a secure job from 8 to 5, and the more they
work, the more they get paid. The more school programs there are with
federal or state funding, the more money they get. The more schools have the
programs, the more funding and perks they receive from federal benefactors.
Everyone is happy, that is, except for the students.
But who cares? Who are
they to complain?
Those with the gold make the rules, and all students have
is some pocket change for cookies and milk.
As is well known, in school, you spend more time learning how to obey and
what to think, instead of and how to think and think for yourself.
Fact of
the matter is that at least 3/4 of the time spent in school is waste.
Students are not at fault
But that’s not the worst part.
The worst part is that public schools not
only have a crappy curriculum, they actually oppress their students by
forcing them to participate in it. It is one thing to offer a profundity of
shallow assignments, and quite another to make students do them.
Simply put, students are forcefully occupied with junk to prevent them from
learning something useful.
Almost everything important I have learned, I learned on my own time outside
school. During junior high, the assignments given to me were few, and I
often completed them in class. This left me with enough time to go to the
library to begin my study of metaphysics and the paranormal, to learn truth
on my own and experiment with what I had learned to confirm the nature of
absolute truth.
But as I progressed through high school, increasingly useless assignments
were given to me which taught me nothing (and believe me, I searched for
something useful in them), but occupied my time nonetheless. What was being
taught to me was compartmentalized, full of holes and errors, shallow, and
politically correct to the point of nonsense.
Was it my duty to integrate
the parts and learn the material well enough to be applied? Sure, but the
sheer quantity of homework prevented me from finding time to do just that.
Quantity over quality once again.
Now I am in a state college, and it’s no different. The oppression
continues, except now I’m getting wiser and have caught onto their tricky
scheme to graduate robots instead of humans.
I wish I had more time to do research related to this site, to learn true
physics and history, to continue writing music, and make a difference. But
this time is eroded by the wasteful components of the school curriculum.
Students, except for a few genuine slackers, are not at fault when lagging
in critical thinking skills.
They are not being held back by their own
laziness, but by direct oppression from a system with the power to punish
them or put a bad mark on their transcripts if they don’t give up their
individual pursuits of knowledge in favor of hollow schoolwork.
Overloading creates dysfunction
There are multiple consequences to this program of quantity over quality.
Children are under a lot of stress nowadays in schools due to this, and as a
consequence they shift into a survival mode.
This survival mode consists of taking shortcuts and getting by with the
least amount of effort possible, but even this small amount of effort is too
much and applied toward futile ends. Grades become an ends to a means, and
the true goal of education is detached from daily work. Studying is only
applied toward taking the test, but not for retention thereafter.
Escapism
takes hold and watching television, taking drugs, engaging in delinquent
behavior, and over-socialization result. This further detracts a student from
learning what’s truly needed.
Under such stress, the student body splits into two groups: those who
conform and those who fail.
The ones who conform learn the rules of the game, no matter how illogical
they are and play the game to the satisfaction of faculty. They become
detached from reality, from what truly matters, and are stifled in their
potential as they are stripped of their inspiration, creativity, and
originality.
Quantity over quality matters as part of the survival mode, and
there is no profit in overdoing quality when the profits of doing so are
decades away in the reaping. Due to this survival mentality, thinking that
far into the future is neglected.
The ones who conform become robotized
and are respected for how well they fit the mold. What was once innate
curiosity to discover the world is turned into neurotic attempts to escape
punishment.
The ones who do not conform fall behind unless they are clever enough to
find another source of education that befits them. Their grades are mediocre
as they are disillusioned with the system and no longer care about pleasing
it.
Chances of graduation and pursuing higher education is slim, and most of
these either drop out or graduate and immediately acquire low paying jobs.
The price of refusal to conform is rejection into substandard wage earning.
Either way, those entering public education leave either as robots or
peasants, hyperbolically speaking.
The system itself
Teachers are not to blame either.
They are like soldiers in the trenches
fighting a war to educate the public, taking orders from their superiors who
have no idea what the current conditions are on the front lines.
Teachers are overstressed, underpaid, and restricted in their ability to
respond to what they perceive in the classroom. Due to political
correctness, threat of legal action by parents, and contrite school-boards
scared of disapproval by a vocal minority with big political clout, teachers
are confined to a tight curriculum they are forced to follow.
They are forced to teach some things, and not allowed to teach others, such
guidelines set by a panel of nodding puppets with no clue as to what the
truth is, let alone initiative to spread it should they know the truth.
These puppets are those who design the school curriculum, who despite once
being teachers themselves, are for the majority removed from the classroom
feedback mechanism.
It’s the little things that contribute to an oppressive atmosphere in
schools. Not withstanding the social atmosphere, teachers on a strained
school budget worry about saving paper, staples, or tape.
When my high
school received thousands of dollars of funding from the community, it used
that money to expand its inventory of computers that weren’t even needed
just to keep up with the politically correct trend for schools to be
technologically current. That money should have been used for the little
things, such as office supplies.
Disruptive students are put in the same class with well behaving ones,
creating academic socialism whereby equality is maintained by dragging up
the idiots at the expense of the smart ones.
Separating students on the
wrong criteria leads to incongruities and a breakdown of the system and its
components. Putting them into grades by age, when they should be instead
separated by level of knowledge and skill, results in academic entropy
whereby the smart become dumb and the dumb learn how to waste other’s time.
Teachers spend more of this time teaching children how to shut up and
sit
still than to pay attention and think. Because they are very limited in
their methods of discipline, teachers and students suffer as the idiotic and
delinquent minority ruins it all for the rest.
Friction within the system from misplacement of resources induces hatred
among its components, as each is suffering and blaming one another instead
of blaming the system itself. In fact, the system is set up such that the
components feed off one another in a long term downward spiral.
Teachers have contempt for the students, and often make an effort to take
out aggression upon them, seeing them as the enemy and cause of their own
stress. Students see authority as something to be defied, unless they are
already broken by it.
Teachers make up illogical rules to test how well
students obey, such as making them walk a certain way through the library,
or not enter or leave certain exits at certain times, and other minor things
which irritate students and allow faculty to feel good when they exert their
powers.
This tension between student and teacher shatters trust between
them, and any teaching and learning between them enters the domain of
negative reinforcement.
Instead of them loving and respecting one another,
they hate each other but do what they are supposed to, to avoid consequences
if they do otherwise.
When you see a student, what you’re really seeing is someone low on ambition
and initiative, but starving for recognition and self-esteem. This is a
symptom of a system that is anti-life, anti-individualism, and anti-spirit.
Compressing a wonderful human into a precise block to fit perfectly into
cubicle induces the survival mode of life.
Knowledge, having been made into
the source of his distress, is put at the bottom of his list of priorities,
as he has to do whatever is possible to regain his self esteem, recognition,
and peace of mind.
However, he must do so within the confines of the system.
Dysfunction results. Instead of individualism meaning thinking for oneself
and seeking one’s own truth and sense of morality, individualism becomes
wearing freaky clothing, having funny hair, and garnering attention via
infantile vulgarity no matter if it is for fame or infamy. These superficial
methods are all that are still legal within the system. The true human
spirit, however, is suppressed.
Those who are broken follow the teacher’s illogical rules and learn to trust
authority over their own potentials.
In this, they become a cog in the
wheel. Breaking orders is taboo to them, something they get very nervous
about when it happens, and they certainly don’t do it willingly. They become
neurotics and unstable perfectionists who stand high on shaky foundations.
Once their individuality is broken, they become robots very good at their
tasks. Many go on to college, absorb what’s fed to them well, and become
academicians with a groovy little niche and nice income in their fields of
research. But however wonderful that sounds, they are robots and nothing
more. Or to make another analogy, they are cows.
They don’t know that being the best cow still doesn’t make you a cowboy.
The straight track
We hear stories of entrepreneurs who strike it rich after dropping out of
college and pursuing their dreams. We hear stories of those who go from rags
to riches, of those who defied convention and revolutionized the world.
But what do we hear in school?
We hear that these people are the exception
not the rule. That is certainly true, but what the system is implying is
that you are the rule, not the exception, so don’t even try to deviate from
the straight track.
The straight track is what students are being taught by the system,
concerning the course of their lives.
The straight track told to high school
students goes as follows:
You need to do your assignment to get a good grade. When you get good
grades, your transcript will be favored by employers and colleges. You might
even get scholarships to go to a good college.
If you’re good in college,
you’ll get a degree and have good chances of getting a good job. And with a
good job you’ll have a good wife, good kids, and a good life.
What they’re really saying is this:
Don’t worry about changing the world, just concentrate on getting good
grades because that is the only measure of what you’re worth in the eyes of
those you’ll serve. Go to college and find your quiet niche in the world,
where you’ll be secure in your job because you’re so specialized, there’s no
one else in the world who can take your place.
You’ll be working to maintain
the system as you’re seen fit.
Focus all your energy into this specialized
area and don’t worry about making an impact on the world because as long as
you stay specialized and compartmentalized, we’ll clothe you, feed you, give
you a good family, and bury you in a good plot of land.
Deviating from the track is abhorred by the system.
If you show initiative
and take risks, you become a statistical outlier, an anomaly in their
statistical models, someone who poses a threat to the system because you are
a seed with the potential to overturn the mirrors and reveal the truth
behind this silent war.
Defy
In this lies the point of the article.
You cannot be successful, recognized,
or a true human being unless you defy the system. If you only do what you’re
told, you’ll be no better than average.
The system has been designed by the biggest corporation of all, the state.
Public schools either turn out worker drones who serve the state and its
partnering greedy corporations, or else they turn out welfare recipients who
are an excuse for the state to maintain its colossal parasitic size and an
idiotic consumer base to buy these corporations useless toys and poisons.
So many students are under this illusion, the illusion being that they
either follow the straight track, try to be the best cow in the herd to
maintain financial and social security, or else defy the system and fail
miserably, ending up as a bum on the street.
You are seen as a social failure if you defy the system. If you measure your
success by what the system deems is successful, then you fear deviating from
the straight track because that is a sign of failure.
However, you must therefore redesign your standards of success.
Would
dropping out of a state college make you a failure? In the eyes of other
cows, maybe, but pursuing a better education elsewhere be it independently
or real world experience would more than make up for it.
How many famous people do you know who did everything they were told and
nothing more, who never took risks for fear of defying the status quo?
Not
very many...
Conclusion
The lesson is that not only must you take risks and utilize your innate
initiative, you must also get over your fear of defying the system and do so
to get ahead of the herd.
You are the exception, not the rule, because you
have the power to be.
Now, the robots in the system are definitely needed. We still need
employees, soldiers, and scientists who are specialized in what they do, but
presently there is an overabundance among these.
Therefore, the emergence of
individualists, generalists, and entrepreneurs is encouraged.
And the only way for them to increase in numbers is for people like you to
break out of the mold and fulfill your destiny as a human,
not a machine.