University is a positive choice – a reply to Dave Richards’ pessimistic view of institutional education
One comment writer had a pretty tough time at school. Last week, Dave Richards poured his heart out to Palatinate readers, describing the “throbbing ache” he felt when sitting in a classroom. Richards recalled his “ghostly memories” of an experience he claims separated him from his true nature.
Richards then managed to move beyond dark recollections to launch an attack on the institutional education process. His conclusion? That all those hours in the classroom were intended to turn him into a passive, obedient worker, suitable for filling a gap on the production line.
Indeed, Richards believes this has happened to all of us. The curriculum, instead of fostering independent thinking, has acted as a smoke screen for the system of forced learning that ensures we become emotionally dependent on authority.
So, we learn small bits of useless information and compete with our peers to see who can recall the most in an examination. We are then given a place on the production line based on how well we do.
It’s fair to say that Richards’ experiences are congruent to the theories of some notable academics. In 1992, John Gatto published Dumbing Us Down, arguing that mainstream education systems had a “hidden curriculum” intended to enforce the transmission of norms, values and beliefs decided by figures of authority. He believes that the curriculum makes us more likely to favour democracy, helping us to avoid radical political systems like anarchism or socialism.
But it’s also fair to say that boring books don’t sell. So had Gatto written, say, a history of American education policy, he wouldn’t have sold 150,000 copies. This isn’t to suggest that Gatto’s motives were purely monetary: he won New York City’s Teacher of the Year award three times before giving up to become an author in 1991. But it is a known truth that radical, counter-intuitive books will always win more publicity than any other.
Academic intrigues aside, Richards’ position can’t be left unscrutinised. Firstly, he has painted a wildly inaccurate picture of modern education practices. This seems hard to do given his first-hand experience in a top-flight institution, but he’s managed it nevertheless. He describes the university he attends as totally aligned to ‘the needs of the corporate sector’.
This means that he isn’t free to pursue his own interests because he’s too busy being instructed on how best to fit into the production line. Admittedly, in the last few weeks of term summatives always capture a few slaves. But for the vast majority, university life isn’t defined by the library or laboratory. Rather than a life dominated by corporate instruction, students thrive on Saturday walks with the Hill Walking Society, rehearsals for a college musical and Wednesday afternoons at Maiden Castle.
But what’s so wrong with wanting a good job? Richards describes the world of work as a production line: a cosmos of obedience and marginalisation. This just doesn’t fit with the freedom of choice available to those who have persevered with education, and the subsequent satisfaction they gain from doing a good job well. Is a Durham graduate using their experience of working with DUCK to start up their own charity part of the ‘production line’?
Is a committed Union Society debater who goes on to enter Parliament evidence of obedience and marginalisation? Everyone who leaves Durham finds more open doors and greater life choices. Education fosters individuality.
Richards’ thoughts on tuition fees are attention-grabbing but unconvincing. They are, he argues, a commodity: a calculated financial investment for one’s corporate future. In paying out money early, we have a greater chance of positioning ourselves further up the production line later on. Does this match up to why you came to Durham?
In part, it should. You weighed up your options and decided university was worth spending £3,145 a year on. Next year, you’ll pay £3,225. But your decision didn’t rest solely on forecast accountancy.
You thought Durham was an amazing place, the Wear being slightly more attractive than the M1. You wanted to meet amazing people, and you have. Your friends are interesting, funny and caring: without them Hound would just be a big, noisy, messy room.
And you chose a university which thrives on soul-enriching activities. That’s why your week just isn’t complete without its complement of sport, music, acting, writing, debating and whatever else you’ll always make time for. Education is a lifestyle choice.
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a well-written positive article
its a shame this wasnt published next to the original piece
first of all, what the hell is that first paragraph!? you’ve taken the phrases ‘throbbing ache’ and ‘ghostly memories’ and taken them completely out of context, i was not pouring my heart out, the tone of the article was actually quite aggressive. its a cheap tactic
the core of the article was that the PRIMARY role of institutional is to force obedience and passivity. so if you get an A no one ares much but if your 5 mins late its a big deal, this was clearly stated in the article;
‘To understand this you have to realise that the syllabus itself is a smokescreen. The real curriculum consists of teaching CONFUSION through teaching fragmented syllabuses, INDIFFERENCE through forced prescribed learning, EMOTIONAL DEPENDANCY to an authority that can control your rights and your grades, IRRATIONAL COMPETITION through grading from a young age and focus of independent goals. Anything in fact that creates discipline and stops independent thought. The aim is to anaesthetise consciousness, to make you obedient and emotionally dependant on authority and to not think critically.’
so do you think this is correct or not? you just dismiss it because john gatto is an advocate of these ideas and he is in your opinion someone primarily looking to make an extreme argument for money. you feel no evidence is needed for this statement. if you want to see the original documents and quotes of the poeple who founded and designed our educaiton system then i would recommend you read gatto’s best book THE UNDERGROUND HISTORY OF AMERICAN EDUCATION, a book which bizarrely you criticise him for not writing
in terms of university, again i dont think you understand the argument. as long as you are passively processing informaiton then it doesnt matter what your ‘learning’ because it isnt education; your not internalising and evaluating the material in terms of your understanding of the world. i didnt say that someone couldnt set up a charity or whatever they do after uni or have a lot of free time during uni, i said that institutional education is primarily focused on creating obedience and passivity. it has nothing to do with people going hill walking! im talking about the content of institutional education and its priorities, not about what poeple do in their spare time
tuition fees, again you completely misunderstand. i didnt say that everyone who goes to uni personally justifys paying tuition fees as a commodity, im not trying to get into everyones head. i said that new labour implemented them with the understanding that its a way to discipline the population. so if you come out of uni a trained lawyer and you want to be a human rights lawyer your going to have to think about taking better paid corporate work because you have huge debts to pay off. another example; it would be wise to pay £15,000 for a degree in medieval history. its a product of the neo-liberal economic philosophy which new labour passionately advocate
Good job you stuck “neo” in front of “liberal” there: it makes everything seem bad! Neo-conservative, neo-liberal… Oh, there’s a “New Labour” in there as well!
Students are lazy. I know I am; that’s why I’m on here rather than writing my essay. Schoolchildren are even more so. They need to be directed so that they will learn to direct themselves; left to their own devices they will not graze like wildebeest on the plains of knowledge, but just procrastinate endlessly. (Incidentally, how is decent time management NOT a valuable skill?!)
Your idea of school as a place primarily to create obedient workers is flawed on two accounts. First, that it implies there is a conspiracy, that educationalists have been conniving together all these years to oppress us poor masses.
Second, that the skills is imparts are demonstrably useful in fighting any oppression. Take maths skills, for example: it is much easier for the evil capitalist to rip off an innumerate worker. You yourself referred to Terry Eagleton; did you believe everything you read, or did you read it critically? The latter, I would hope; but where did you learn the skills to do so?
Well done, Jack, for exposing Dave’s article for the nonsense it is. The comment pages of the Palatinate are so Dave Spartish these days it’s embarrassing.
Dave, it’s quite insufferable; you demand high standards of evidence from the people criticising you, yet throughout your own writing you provide no evidence to support the conspiracy theories which you tout. A sentence is not profound just because you choose to capitalise particular words, which you have evidently memorised from the textbooks of certain tenth-rate left wing theorists.
Oh, and institutionalised education has taught me at least one thing: how to spell.
There are many different ways to teach a class, i think thats self-evident. You can give a kid some free time to think about what they would be interested in studying or personal thinking time and give them the task to give notes at the end of their session. To come up task for the whole class. To send a group of kids to a soup kitchen for a day where they can use their initiative and also help people. Or send them to work in the local community for the day, asay in a shop, to see how people live their lives. How classes are taught at the moment is a very specific way to teach a class
Conspiracy? Theres no conspiracy. It does not entail a conspiracy for elites to plan things.Take a look at these US government education documents from the 60’s nd 70s
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/2d.htm
however, all i need for my argument to work is to show that the primary role of education is to feed bsiness needs. Take these EU guidelines for education (basically saying you need to align education with what business needs)
http://www.eumonitor.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=117469&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
this article is useful because it notes that the department of trade and industry writes government white papers for education
http://www.signsofthetimes.org.uk/knowledge.html
what are these ‘skills’ learnt in school and how do they fit employers needs? I think this article in the new humanist describes them pretty well
http://newhumanist.org.uk/1273
it is also important to note how much of a boost to the economy the university system itself gives us
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2002/jun/18/highereducation.uk2
ruth kelly; secretary of education. Ed balls; current secretary of state for children, schools and families toname two. Both economists
I dont think its controversial to say that the needs of the economy are planned through the education system and thats all my argument needs because private business wants passivity and obedience. Yes people need some maths adn the ability to structure an argument and whatever else is needed to do the job efficiently but essentially they need to take orders and do the work efficiently. Thats why passivity and obedience has to be drilled into kids
take a mate of mine who does chemistry he has been offered a job after uni and they told him that he wont use any of the knowledge he’s learnt in uni. They just need a degree to show that he can process complicated scientific material. He would be less use if he’d learnt chemistry by looking at it as a personal interest which he’d followed up because the whole point is that he take orders and he does the work given to him
you can actually agree with me and say that its the way society should be, but i personally dont want oneof the primary means of socialisation to be teaching kids passivity and mindless obedience, among other evils, such as apathy towards learning. It is not a view based on marxism but on personal liberty
p.s. do i think that ive only learnt critical thinking skills through education? No, almost completely through personal learning.
Im dominating palatinate? Ive had four articles published this year, you mark?
I dont use evidence? heres my iraq article, its virtually all evidence
http://www.palatinate.org.uk/comment/comment-articles/on-deluded-%e2%80%98left-wing%e2%80%99-imperialists/
why are my comments getting deleted by the ‘moderator’? its happened twice now. i’m not using foul language
Your comments were marked for moderation because they contained upwards of two links. One of the most basic rules of spam is the more links, the more likely it is to be spam. Luckily the spam filter recognised that you were probably a real person, so instead of dumping you with the hundreds of real spam comments we get every day it moderated them.
Apologies for not replying sooner- I didn’t check the website until yesterday.
First off, let’s try and meet on one point. I totally agree that our articles should have been published alongside each other. But, it’s also true that anything you choose to have put in the newspaper is in the public domain, and therefore open to scrutiny at any future point.
I’ll try and keep this short – I think you’ve been a tad excessive in the length and content of some of your posts on here.
I’d hope that my article can stand alone as an opinion. It’s a credit to you that you managed to write a piece contentious enough to stir me into responding. But I really believe that my article was more a representation of my opinion of education than it was an attack on yours.
Your article in the newspaper wasn’t really ‘aggressive’. It was pessimistic and defeatist: exactly the reasons why I chose to write a positive and hopeful piece about why we’re at university. However, your subsequent posts on here certainly were aggressive – I agree with Dan about the capitalisation. It actually makes it more difficult to read.
I think that education fosters individuality, gives us more choices later on in life and lets us do things we wouldn’t otherwise get the chance to.
When I leave University I’m probably going to forget everything I’ve learnt. But that doesn’t matter- I’ll be a better person and my memory will be filled with all the other exciting things I’ve done in Durham.
On Thursday I spent the whole afternoon in the Botanical Gardens enjoying the sunshine. If education is a conspiracy to get me to fit into the production line then it’s doing a pretty rubbish job at it!
Finally, I think the term ‘Dave Spartish’ means negative/pessimistic. I don’t think Mark was suggesting that you dominate the Palatinate.
I can see a lot of heat on this wall. I don’t think Dave should be attacked for his views with comments about whether his writing is in capitals or lowercase letters, or with remarks about how his writing is ‘excessive’. If he has something to say, he has as much right to explain it in full as anyone else does, and he should be not be criticized here for spelling — an action irrelevant when it is ideas we are discussing.
I think it would be very beneficial to all who have written to take an Education Studies degree at Durham — judging by your arguments, you would all have done very well on it. On the course, you really begin to formulate a coherent knowledge of the sociology of education, which focuses not necessarily on conspiracy theories, but on how education is employed in many cases as a political tool, and how it inadvertently perpetuates inequality and exclusion already inherent within contemporary British society.
It is important to understand that education does not exist in a vacuum; it both reflects and creates the world around it. This becomes apparent when you regard the amount of social problems that are blamed on the failures of schools and the education system (think about integration issues, violence, the respect agenda, etc).
I’d advise a quick look at Michael F.D. Young’s Knowledge and Control, one of the most important starting points for achieving an understanding of all that lies underneath current education systems. In 1968, Philip Jackson wrote a book on Life in Classrooms, in which he coined what later became the famous concept of the “hidden curriculum”, showing that a lot of what we learn at school comes from more than the set curriculum, but is deeply entrenched in the ethos of the institution.
What Dave is saying concerning education forming us into workers could be considered quite true, especially when you look at how education since the Thatcherite government has identified education as training the people of our nation for competing in a global economy where efficiency in the market is the goal.
Also, I would have to object to the comment about schoolchildren being intrinsically lazy. It is really important to pay attention to the ways in which we are assessing children, and how this affects their motivation. I do not believe that we are innately unmotivated or lazy, but that this comes as a result of an education system that enforces external motivation, that whole idea of only completing an assignment because it has to be graded, and you wouldn’t like to fail, rather than learning for learning’s sake.
I think all of you also need to realize that every person has had a different experience with education, and that while autonomous, critical and original thought are some of the aims of a liberal education system, it is often hard to put this in practice. In any case, I can really see from the very fact that you have all discussed this so vehemently that perhaps the education system has succeeded to some extent, in creating these sorts of insightful and curious thinkers.
I think your right laura, although i’d probably have to say that schooling has always primarily been about forcing and obedience.
75% of british people now work in the services sector which is why education is now trying to teach ’skills’ which the new humanist article explains. ive got another article from the guardian actually with a government education advisor saying that schoolchildren need to be taught more ‘humility’, he sees humility as a skill, i think we know what that entails. i think the focus on the service sector correlates with the talk of matching education with globalisation, not because its makes sense, the british service sector is actually almost completely immune from globalisation at the moment but because its an excuse to narrow the argument of education to look mianly at teaching ’soft skills’ which feed the service sector
I completely agree with the point about the myth of kids being instintively lazy and unintersted in education; if you bring a kid up primarily socialised with institutional schooling and tv then its almost the perfect way to make someone disenchanted with everything
jack; in terms of saying schooling fosters indiviuality, i personally dont see anything in all the years of classroom time that i’ve had that fosters indiviuality, you admit this by saying that you probably wont remember anything of content after uni. a proper education in my opinion would give you the means to develop interests which would help develop a rich and complex personal conciousness, something that would be difficult to forget.
in my degree ive only had two chances to follow up a personal interest in three years and i wont forget what i’ve learnt in those areas
again, im talking about the content of schooling, not what people do outside of it, e.g.botanical gardens
‘dave spartish’ is a phrase which i think means using weak ideologically biased jargon, throwaway language. i took the pun on my name, maybe wrongly, as a suggestion that this because i was having too many articles published
and, if the article is primarily about your ideas then why is it structured as a critism of my article? i dont think it works because you really just take my article to be very pessimistic and dont focus on the arguments i made.
i should also say that i think judging my article as pessimistic is a value judgement in my opinion. i understand why, but i think that if you want to free yourself from the negative power of a social force then you have to artculate and therefore destroy its myth, the whole thing only works because we accept the current set up as a kind of natural fact. its like at the end of alice in wonderland when she realises that the world is just a pile of cards and it topples and shes liberated from it.
and even if you think this system is great already, then why not make even better?
Hi Dave,
I think it’s okay for me to tackle the pessimistic tone of your article. You’re right that I’ve made a value judgment – but it certainly isn’t ad hominem. You are (by your own implicit admission) pessimistic about education. This is clear from the tone and content of your initial article and posts on here.
The reason I keep banging on about what we do outside of our timetabled schooling is because you just can’t exclude this stuff from ‘education’. What I’m saying is that ‘education’ isn’t just classes/lectures/seminars – it’s everything else that being at an institution allows you to do. So, as cheesy as this might sound, I believe that everything we do in the three years at university is an ‘education’.
I’m not sure what degree you’re doing, but I study History. Although there is a definite curriculum, and I have to cover everything my tutors tell me to, there is massive scope for research into what I find interesting. So much so that I am able to devise and set my own essay question if I like.
You’ll argue that this isn’t really fostering individuality because I’m still working in the parameters of a curriculum. But it’s me that has chosen this curriculum, as has everybody at university. Up to the age of 16 the curriculum is fairly fixed. But surely this is necessary to ensure that we develop the skills needed for life, not just the world of work? There has to be a fixed system initially to ensure that we learn all these things. Okay, we may not use them, but we’re too young to know what we want to do. Given the chance, I’m sure many under-16s would like to leave school early. This would be their choice, and they would have greater short-run freedom. But in the long-run they might have shut off options that would have been better for them.
It’s actually quite insulting to students that you think we’re part of a masterplan to have us fit nicely into the corporate world. That’s partly why I chose to write my article: because I was sure that I chose to come to university because it would foster my individuality and give me greater freedom with the rest of my life. I think the current system works. If I want to get a job at the end, I have some lovely skills that an employer would like. But if I want to do something completely different, I’ve just spent three years studying something I love and having a great time with my life. University doesn’t back students into a corner, it opens a hundred more doors for them- sounds cheesy, but I think the metaphor works.
If you’ve found evidence of a hidden curriculum, why haven’t you escaped it? Surely you think you’re going to have a better life because of university?
well I think if there is to be a debate it has to be about the content of schooling, dismissing sports facilities, debating societies etc from the debate. there has to be a separation of the institution as a whole and the content of the work. because if your at work your boss isn’t going to care if you play sport in your own time and get drunk on friday night, in fact wouldn’t your boss want you to let off steam?
also, i think there has to be a focus on ’skills.’
you talk about having lovely skills being something you can use for yourself when really most dialogue about skills in education is dialogue about the hidden curriculum. the new humanist article i posted talks about the nature of these skills clearly. if you look at education up to 18 the skills youve learnt once you get passed literacy and basic numeracy are of dubious value, i mean take essay writing, ok its a skill to learn how to write an essay, how to write a logical argument, but does it have to take years and years? its not really a very complicated skill and could be learnt a lot quicker.
why havent i escaped it? because a degree is an important economic commodity to have. what’s the alternative at the moment? i end up with a worse job
is there a masterplan? i dealt with this in an earlier post. the point is there doesn’t have to be a masterplan for my argument to work. there could just be an organic process over many years looking at different ways to educate children, but the important point is that they have to go through an economic filter. because power in society is private and the government primarily represent the interests of private power. any children who ocme out of the educaiton system are not suited to work in private power are going to lead to the possibility of lower economic efficiency
also, i take your point that you like your course and you have some areas to follow up an interest. but i havent said that nothing of any value happens in the education system, i mean your say your in a position now where you can follow up an interest in very narrow boundaries and that obviously can be of some value, but generally these are the rare exceptions. you say yourself that nothing happened up to the age of 16. id have to increase this to 18 because your not given any chances to follow up personal interests at a-level. then you get a few gaps opening up at uni. but after 14 years of the hidden curriculum most people are too apathetic and cynical of the education system to care any more apart from getting a good grade
I am aware that I am joining this debate quite late, but I wish to demonstrate that my own personal experiences run counter to what David is saying. David speaks of a ‘hidden curriculum’ designed to indoctrinate us. In his own words “The aim is to anaesthetise consciousness, to make you obedient and emotionally dependant on authority and to not think critically.” Although not necessary, a dissemination of this statement will further reveal how nonsensical it is.
Firstly the claim that “the aim is to anaesthetise consciousness.” My question is, consciousness of what? Consciousness is in its simplest sense awareness and responsiveness to a given environment. Our given environment I believe can be divided into two; the natural world and the society in which we live. I come firstly to the natural world. Given your claims, our education not only reduces our awareness of the world we live in, but completely renders us useless. We can immediately see this to be false, but as ever, claims need evidence and that evidence comes in the form of science. The teaching of science from a young age enables even unscientific Ancient Historians such as myself to understand that heat kills bacteria, water boils at 100 degrees Celsius, the by-product of fermented grain causes an intoxicating effect etc. Using this awareness of my environment I am able to respond appropriately; I cook my food before I eat it, I boil a kettle to make a cup of tea, I drink triples at Reform before heading to Studio. When people focus their education on science however, we’re not only aware of the world we live in, but of our place in the universe. Contrary to your claims, education does not stifle our consciousness but allows it to thrive.
You claim that “(education serves) to make you obedient and emotionally dependant on authority.” Surprisingly, I agree with this point, but the difference between you and me is that you hold this to be a negative thing. Humans are social animals. We need to be in groups if we are to thrive, but for these groups to thrive there needs to be an understanding between its members. In small groups this is simple enough; don’t kill others, don’t steal from others etc. It just so happens that our modern society is a lot bigger than tribal groups, but it still holds true that we need morals and laws to thrive. Given the size of our society there are many more morals and laws that we need to be aware of, many of them complex, and it is education’s purpose to teach these. Despite what you may believe, the purpose of education has always been to impart social mores, or as you bluntly put it, “make you obedient and emotionally dependant on authority.” In classical Athens, education, for those who could afford it, served to make you a better citizen. Those who couldn’t afford it more often than not prepared for a particular job through apprenticeships. In Hellenistic Egypt education served to maintain Greek identity with its fixed linguistic and social bounds. Without this cohesive force, society as we know it wouldn’t exist.. Education as indoctrination is not a new phenomena and shouldn’t really be all that surprising. But just because it indoctrinates us does not mean it renders us ‘unconscious’, nor does it do it in the way you describe it.
You list the methods through which education indoctrinates us as being:
1)Teaching confusion via fragmented syllabuses
2)Indifference by having a set curriculum
3)Creating emotional dependency to those who ‘control our rights and grades’
4) Instilling irrational competition through grades
Firstly, teachers do not teach confusion; they teach their subject. To say they do it via the syllabus is, quite frankly, ridiculous. The purpose of the syllabus is to ensure that students know what topics they will be expected to understand, how much effort they will have to put into the course and also to show how the course will be taught. A syllabus reduces confusion rather than creating it. Secondly, a set curriculum serves the same purpose. It also serves to impart societal morals, ensuring that everybody in a society is following the same ‘goal’. Thirdly, emotional dependency is a natural trait of the human being. As children we depend on our parents to ensure our survival, as adults that dependency manifests itself as trust. I depend on my teacher/lecturer because I know that they are the ones who understand the material and I trust them to teach it to me properly. With regards to those who ‘control our rights’, meaning politicians, of course I depend on them to control my rights. They are the people I voted for to do that very thing because they were in a position to be able to do it. As I explained before, human beings are social animals and dependency is a natural thing. Finally I come to ‘irrational competition’ through grades. ‘Irrational’ implies that there is no reason for this competition, but I can easily name a number of reasons. The purpose of grading is to allow students to see how well they understand what they have been taught. It allows teachers to see any particular areas of confusion and to rectify that. Competition is natural. It can be seen in the animal kingdom just as it can be seen in education. The reason this competition exists with regards to grades is because people want to outperform others, meaning that they want to demonstrate that they know more than others. Competition provides an impetus for doing better, and this is what leads to progress. So contrary to your claims, grading is not irrational.
The last part of your claim, that modern education is designed to make people “not think critically” can be easily dispelled. Just look at the nature of any course. I can only speak for my own, that being Ancient History, but what I am constantly doing is reading sources, critically analysing them and then coming to some sort of conclusion. This essentially covers every arts subject. Science subjects are exactly the same. You may say that in science you are only taught facts and don’t think about them critically, but the reason you are taught facts is because they are facts. The scientific method by its very nature encourages people to take and examine these facts. Critical thinking is very much part of every subject; education does not stifle it.
Education’s primary function is not about serving the needs of the economy and is not about turning us into brainless workers. Education is and always has been a way of instilling common values which allow a society to exist prosperously and it just so happens that the economy plays such a large role in ours. Because of this a lot of our education is to give us the skills necessary to play our role in the economy, but it does not do it by turning us into zombies, as I have just demonstrated. Education is arguably the reason that civilisation is as advanced as it is. Modern man managed to exist for 7000 years without making progress, but following the advent of an educational system, look at what has been been achieved. Your gripe is that it stifles personal development and doesn’t allow us to pursue that which interests us. How come I, after years at a school that didn’t offer classics or ancient history, went to university to study a subject for no reason other than the fact that it interested me? My entire university career revolves around pursuing something simply because it is interesting. If education was as you described it, I wouldn’t be doing this. If education was about moulding us into mindless zombies serving the needs of the ruling elite, we would all toe the same line. We would all vote for the same political party, we would all dress the same way, we would all follow the same religion etc., but we don’t, and that is testament to the fact that education allows us to develop as individuals within a social environment. The alternative you present involves people being allowed to do what they want and pursue whatever interests they want without any semblance of a framework. Pursuing interests is what life is for and education is one way of doing it Your alternative model would result in a world with no discipline or commonality between people. If everybody did things their own way, society would crumble and nobody would be able to pursue their interests. It seems that your problem isn’t with education, but with society, but unfortunately for you, that’s just that way it is and the way it always will be.