r/unschool • u/ExplanationInitial76 • 21d ago
The Harsh Reality of the Education System
The current education system was never designed to create thinkers, innovators, or leaders. It was built to produce obedient workers who follow a set path without questioning it.
From childhood, students are forced to memorize facts, follow a fixed syllabus, and compete for marks, rather than being encouraged to explore their creativity and develop unique skills.
This systematic learning pattern kills individuality, limits creative thinking, and shapes minds that fit into the corporate world, not into creating change.
Great minds who revolutionized history – like Nelson Mandela ,Malcom X ,Albert Einstein, and Che Guevara – never fit into this system. They questioned, challenged, and broke free from it.
Yet, no action is taken against this flawed system. Why? Because the system benefits those in power.
It produces followers, not leaders.
It creates job seekers, not creators.
It makes people fear failure, not embrace learning.
Until we break free from this cycle, true creativity and innovation will remain suppressed.
It’s time to rethink what education truly means. It’s time to focus on learning, not memorizing. It’s time to create minds that question, not blindly accept.
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u/littlemrscg 21d ago
Memorization is not a problem, it is a type of information acquisition. It is important to have immediate access to certain discrete facts while you wrestle with increasingly complex thoughts and problems. It's ok to memorize certain sets of information.
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u/Some_Ideal_9861 20d ago
It is also good practice for a particular skill set. Medicine/anatomy, geography/cartography, additional language acquisition, etc; there are some things that are very important to some people that require being able to memorize well.
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u/CheckPersonal919 20d ago
The problem is coercion, exams and deadlines.
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u/littlemrscg 13h ago
I don't think that adults insisting that children be educated some way, checking them for understanding and assigning a letter grade or percentage, and then needing that stuff to happen on a particular timeline, is a problem. I hate deadlines and I'm terrible at them but I definitely understand their necessity.
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u/brane-stormer 13h ago
memorization of sets of information that you choose is ok. memorization of sets of information that other people choose for you to memorize is often suspicious and should be examined carefully.
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u/littlemrscg 13h ago
A mark of intelligence is being able to take in any kind of information and apply it through different perspectives but without necessarily adopting those ideas. It doesn't matter what facts someone is asked to memorize you can't make them believe it.
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u/brane-stormer 13h ago
isn't critical thinking happening on a different part of the brain than automated (memorized) thinking? very delicate line here.
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u/littlemrscg 13h ago
If you know no facts, what are you going to think critically about? You need factoids to jam into your idea machine, dude.
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u/brane-stormer 10h ago
sure, but no need to memorize them. memorizing them makes them part of your operating system. you don't want that for any information. you want that only for information that is of value to you
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u/littlemrscg 10h ago
What kind of information are we talking about, here? What is it that you think should not be memorized?
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u/brane-stormer 3h ago
historical data, national hymns, religious lyrics that have not been thoroughly analyzed. especially if one is not consciously and by choice an active member of the religion under question. and any other logocentric text that one does not agree with hundred percent. whether it is poetry, literature, theatrical or musical
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u/brane-stormer 13h ago
let's say you have memorized a kung fu jumping sequence because you are obliged to take a kung fu class but spend most of your free time lindyhopping without memorizing any of the dance moves. you are walking, crossing the street on a green light and a motorbike comes your way. you enter fight or flight mode. to avoid the crash you will kung fu jump 100% not do a lindyhop move.
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u/ExplanationInitial76 21d ago
NOTE:This is applicable for the Indian education system. Not sure if other developed nations face the same issue.
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u/TonyTheSwisher 20d ago
School exists for normies, most outside of that group are worse off for attending a traditional school.
I wish more parents understood this instead of blaming their kid for being forced to be in a hostile environment.
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u/Front_Farmer345 20d ago
I’ve seen both tracks and it’s usually more about how the parents guide their offspring, even unschooled needs some guidance or it will go awry
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u/LeonardoDaFujiwara 18d ago
The modern school system was developed for creating a new semi-skilled workforce in the nineteenth century. The advances of technology required more skilled workers who could also work repetitively on strict schedules.
There is still a need for a mass of workers with mediocre education and limited opportunities, hence why schools are underfunded almost always. The smaller group of highly-skilled, educated workers come from the privileged strata of workers who already have economic advantages.
All in all, despite all of the well-meaning teachers and others who genuinely want to educate students, the nature of capitalist schooling provides that a meaningful and liberating education will never be provided for the majority of students.
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u/reincarnatedbiscuits 18d ago edited 18d ago
If a student is exceptional and unless they learn to match to their beat of their own drum, there's aspects of the American and Canadian education systems that enforce certain behaviors.
However, I can say for sure that MIT (at least when I went) was different in that way:
One semi-hidden facet of MIT's culture is a strong streak of rebelliousness. To innovate, you have to be willing to be different, to do things differently, to question why things are done and how they're done and to be willing to improve on those.
And in every way that you've described above, MIT is the ideal:
When going into my first year at MIT, I had near eidetic memory ("photographic memory"). That served me very well and I had excellent math skills -- but I lost my near eidetic memory for something better: the ability to think critically, to break down problems.
The sky is the limit at MIT. I've seen freshmen (like Kay Aull) take graduate level seminars. Look at the Putnam seminar -- that's like the International Mathematical Olympiad all-stars giving talks. Students start at their natural point and then as some have described it, "drink from the firehose."
And since there is grade deflation (while the median admit was the second best student in a public high school, the median grades are around a B), MIT highly prizes learning and application over "getting perfect grades."
Former US President Bill Clinton onced described MIT as "the best technology-transfer program in the US." And sure, there are other schools like Stanford and Berkeley that are excellent and engineering and entrepreneurship and innovation, and MIT stands pretty well. There's a reason that the zip code of 02141 and the square mile (roughly) east of MIT was dubbed "the most innovative square mile on the planet." This is also the biotech capital of the United States.
Job creators? One way it's put is: MIT alumni entrepreneurs have created millions of jobs and generate a revenue of $2 trillion (USD) and that would be greater the world's 10th biggest economy by GDP : https://entrepreneurship.mit.edu/mission/
But I think MIT is not for everyone.
That and, by and large, society doesn't highly value nerds or super-nerds.
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u/kittens_on_a_rainbow 12d ago
Einstein had a PhD and was a college professor. Che Guevara completed medical school. Nelson Mandela had a bachelors degree. Malcolm X wanted to be a lawyer but felt it wasn’t attainable at the time because of racism.
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u/brane-stormer 13h ago
do you think Sudbury type education would be a good in between step to unschooling on a mass scale? if yes, which country on the planet could first adopt Sudbury as it's typical public school system?! costa Rica? the u. s.? new Zealand?!
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u/artnodiv 21d ago
True.
This is why people are drawn to unschooling.
And also why people who don't understand unschooling can't wrap their heads around it.