Are we puppets of mass education?

There has been a question that I've been pondering for quite a while now, and it has to do a little bit with my last post about starting out at a young age to accomplish something earlier on in life. It kept bugging me that why all of a sudden people have slowed down the pace in trying to reach the hilltop. What had changed since the past few centuries? Was it to do with our diet? My mind went to the most absurd places trying to understand why, and I think I finally have an answer. We have become puppets of mass education. 

Everyday we wake up to go to school, trudging out of our beds as we heave towards the door to get to school. Once we get there, its lesson, break, lesson, break, lesson, break and so on and so forth. Has anyone else realised that we've just become machines? We repeat similar routines day in day out, the ability for us to think has been virtually sucked out of us. There is no adventure, its a series of steps that just keep on going in a loop. By the time we're 15-16, so much life has been sucked out and we've been trained so well to follow the routine, we just basically close our eyes and follow. 

I was once on 9gag (admittedly not the perfect place for seriousness) and I found a post that described something that I thought was really worth sharing. A group of scientists placed 5 monkeys in a cage, and in the middle a ladder with a banana on top. Every time a monkey climbed the ladder, the scientists soaked the rest of the monkeys with cold water. After a while, every time a monkey goes up a ladder, the others beat up the one that climbed the ladder. After sometime, no monkey went up regardless of temptation. The scientists then replaced one of the monkeys. The new monkeys first instinct was to climb the ladder, and instantly he got beat up. After a while the new member knew never to climb the ladder, but he never knew why. Soon one by one the monkeys were replaced and the same happened to every new member; they tried to climb and they got beaten up. Soon all the monkeys were replaced, and every time a new monkey tired climbing the ladder, he got beat up even though no cold showers were being given. If the monkeys could be asked why they beat the new monkey up, the response would've been, 'we have no idea, this is how things are done around here'.  

If we can see closely, we're literally become these monkeys. We go to school everyday, but we have no idea why. Lets not fool ourselves with the excuse of education, that can be done at home too. Before schools ever came up, the world lived on home education and it was fine. And lets ask ourselves, what skill do we have that we've learnt in school? How to give tests? Or how to stay up all night to shove some information into your brain that you'll eventually come to hate and completely forget in a couple of weeks? The biggest of people such as Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Edison, Agatha Christie, Florence Nightingale and thousands more famous people were home-schooled, yet they reached amazing heights. 

As if that was not enough, there are many celebrities who'd rather home-school their children, and I think they'll agree with my factory analogy of the situation. Jimmy Wales in fact, the creator of Wikipedia, himself was stated saying that he is "disappointed by the 'factory nature' of...education." Wales is happy letting his daughter be taught at home. He's happy in following tradition, a tradition that was changed to a perpendicular track in the past 200 years or so. 

Maybe factory products is what the world leaders want. People with bulls*hit drilled into their brains so bad that they will literally be attracted to and absorbed by anything as long as its given to them on a silver platter. And lets again fool ourselves that education shapes futures. Look at Bill Gates, look at Steve Jobs, look at Mark Zuckerberg. Although they were college dropouts, they still are some of the richest people in the world. Infact, the college dropout billionaires amass a grand total standing at $246 billion dollars. If you want to argue that they attended college, then take a look a at business mogul Richard Branson, take a look at the richest man in Spain Amancio Ortega (valued at $31 billion). Research infact states that 20% of all American millionaires never attended college, and that college drop outs have a higher average than those that completed their degrees. 

Day in day out I started to believe what John Taylor Gatto said about education (he inspired this piece: http://www.wesjones.com/gatto1.htm) and how its more to do with mass consumerism than education, and how we're just puppets in a much larger game. Maybe we're not all cutout to be world leader and billionaires, and maybe just maybe we need to be controlled like puppets to get somewhere in life, but people, wake up and take the reins of your life into your own hands for once, the person who's holding the reins now will let go at some point, and it would just be foolish if you never learnt how to ride the horse and fell right off... 

Reaching heights

I've always wondered what it would be like to be in the army at the age of 15, or what it would be like to be trading money well before you reached the 'golden age' of 18. The thing is, it will always remain a thought and it will more or less never happen. One of the reasons being I'm 18 (duuhhh), but the real reason this will never happen is because society thinks kids can't do it, or they're too stupid to pull off big things at a young age.

Lets go back in history and re-read the books about how 15 year olds lead armies, or how they accomplished more than "smoking weed and partying". The thing is, we were never pushed to do anything great as young kids, if we clapped our hands, it was like "OH MY GOD HE CLAPPED!!" and tears of joy started rolling down everyone's cheeks like the 6 month old had conquered the world. A few years later, when the time really came for us to try and conquer the world, people scoffed in our faces. Words weren't needed to express what they were thinking: "look at this young fool, he thinks he can do something." 

Slowly, day by day, our enthusiasm was sucked out of us, and day by day we were fed dreams, dreams that we weren't allowed to pursue. Even after 18, people don't get what they should by the time they're 25-30. The thing is, if a tree takes 10 years to grow, don't expect it to grow in 3 years if you plant it 7 years later. It doesn't matter if you start today, 10 years from now, or you started 5 years ago, the tree is bound to take the same amount of time to grow. It took 150 years before another president younger than 50 took office. 

I don't know if it's because older people are scared that we might accomplish more than they ever did, or its just because they think we're too stupid to do anything. If that's the case, then lets look at Muhammed Bin Qassim, an Ummyad general than conquered part of Pakistan, or Joan of Arc, the French military Supreme commander. Both of these two generals took power at the young age of 17. My biggest accomplishment of the day as an 18 year old is waking up on time. 

Standing behind waiting to be pushed forward by the oncoming crowd isn't going to make you the leader of the pack. Instead, you'll have to raise your feet and walk ahead strong. The earlier you start, the earlier you'll be at the top. What's the point of becoming a billionaire at the age of 60-70? What's the point if you cannot enjoy your youth like you're supposed? Simply put, Nothing.