If there are any minors who are following me or who otherwise see this, I want you to know that you’re right. School really is that bad. I know you feel like a fucking crazy person when you talk to most adults about it and they act like it’s normal and just fine and maybe they even miss school a little bit; these are trauamtized individuals trying to justify what happened to them at best, and bastards who are actively trying to fuck you over at worst. Every single adult I know continues to have nightmares about school: if it were anything else, we would absolutely be calling that post traumatic stress disorder.
Yes, it really is a factory designed to make you miserable and crush your bones into a shape that will fit into the capitalist death machine. The extreme stress and anxiety you feel every day is not an accident; it is designed that way. It is designed to break you. If you feel like you’re wasting your time, you probably are: consider not going to college and consider dropping out. At the very least, do anything you can to make your life a little more tolerable, even if that just means not caring so much about your grades anymore. I promise that the second you graduate, whether you got a D or an A in that class will never ever matter again.
Look okay I get it. School is really shitty. It doesn’t have to be that way, but it is. It is designed to teach you how to be a good worker. Sit when you’re told, don’t use the bathroom too much, eat quickly, eat food that is not good for you, wake up early even though we know it’s bad for you, don’t go before the bell, do your homework after school.
But at the same time- we NEED education, maybe not how it is now, but you need to learn a lot of the shit they’re teaching you.
In this day and age I’m sorry you need to know how to read, or comprehend language verbally or otherwise. You need to know how to do some math, maybe not calculus or even algebra, but you need that basis to do statistics which is highly important. You should be aware of where certain places are, and know how to find something on a map. You need to know history so you don’t repeat it. You need to know how to pick up on symbols and connect them to deeper meaning. And you need to be able to question what you read. If you took the news at face value you’re gonna be misinformed 90% of the time. You need to know how your body works, what keeps it healthy and how to keep it healthy. You need to know how to do some critical thinking for yourself, and by yourself.
Hell, I know you think “well I’ve got this computer in my pocket that knows how to do all of that and so much more”. That’s great and all, but, there’s a learning curve to technology too, you even need to know how to use it right.
And ya know, a dependency on computers is… not good. If you are unable to get around somewhere without your phone you’re gonna be fucked when you lose signal. If you can’t understand the deeper meaning behind what somebody says without googling it for advice you’re gonna be miserable to talk to.
And, without that baseline education you’re gonna be pretty dependent on that computer. Which means you are FAR easier to take advantage of, either by corporations or by other people. When your old phone stops working and you can’t do the math to add a tip that server might pull a bullshit number and claim that is the correct amount. Or when you can’t do the math to add calculate your paycheck, or taxes. When your phone stops working you’re gonna shell out another $1,000 to get a new one because you don’t know how to function without it. You can’t.
I get it, I know it’s stressful and it sucks and yeah, a lot of it is bullshit. But you also learn some pretty important stuff, even if you don’t think so now. There’s a reason you can’t drop out until a certain age. You shouldn’t read something like this post and assume this person is right 100%. Because not questioning even the shit someone says online and not being able to formulate why they might not be entirely correct is super dangerous.
And you can hate it but I hope you know that learning how the world works has been a human thing for hundreds and hundreds of years. It may not have been a formal education like we have now, but you still need to be taught how to do things, wether it’s thinking critically in a world designed to take advantage of you, or just knowing what plants to eat or how to cook something so it doesn’t make you sick.
And I gotta say, without at least some of the stuff most people learned in highschool, a lot of people wouldn’t be able to pinpoint why the way education is designed now is harmful. You wouldn’t be able to articulate in a sensible manner why you think it’s harmful and you certainly wouldn’t have the necessary tools to fight against that system without at least some of the stuff you learned, even if you didn’t learn it in the best way.
Okay apparently I’m not done but: an educated population is less easily controlled by unjust government. When you’re being spoonfed propaganda (which let’s be honest is pretty much all the time) you need the skills to dissect it. What is the purpose of this message? What are they trying to get me to do/not do? Who made this? Why?
Asking why/ why not is imo the reason humanity has come as far as it has. Behind every major breakthrough and every achievement is some one(s) asking; “well why the hell not? Why can’t we do this? ” And people who aren’t able to pick up on symbolism or patterns (which is a lot of what English class teaches you) are less likely to be asking that question. People who don’t learn in some way shape or form the importance of questioning everything they’re told are much more easily controlled in every way. And school is (unfortunately) a great way to educate a massive number of people.
Should it be the way it is? Probably not. Do we still need some way to educate the masses? I think so.
