Schools are the universal institutions where basic education is drilled into us. They are the first place we encounter the alphabet and numbers, and the first place we realise we will spend long hours each day away from our parents and loved ones—a forced separation that becomes routine for most of the week.
I hated school. From childhood until today, schools have represented much of what is wrong with our society. We force children to carry heavy bags full of books that, in the end, teach us almost nothing of lasting value. I still remember the nursery rhymes from kindergarten, yet what practical benefit they offer in the adult world still eludes me.
In some Western countries and in most dictatorships, children are forcefully taught agenda-driven curricula. Catch them young, fill their heads with nonsense and impractical ideas, and you create devoted cadre members who will serve the system for life. Even elite Ivy League schools often promote failed populist ideologies that sound appealing on paper but collapse when put into practice.
Where does all this leave the young mind? None of the training or teaching we provide truly prepares us for the challenges of the real world. In developer terms, it is like learning those “Hello World” programs in various languages—basic one- or two-line codes that simply display a silly message on the screen. Teaching young minds a Hello World program and then throwing them out to face the real world is essentially what education does today. I would much prefer that young minds be taught real-world skills from an early age—skills that align with each child’s natural aptitude.
It would be far better to promote learning that matches the capabilities and interests of the individual. A child drawn to music should be free to pursue that path; another with a strong inclination toward sports should be guided in that direction. There should be no force or coercion. I believe AI will eventually handle this kind of sorting. It sounds unsettling and echoes the premise of a sci-fi dystopia, yet I sincerely believe that is the direction we are heading. Whether we like that future or not is open to debate, but it is where we are going.