Endless quizzes and a continuous race. This is such a competition that not only children but families find themselves in this vicious circle. Moreover, parents are in a race because they want their children to take part in this limited market. I liken this to a game in which the music cannot be seated when the music ends.
I made this entry to question the compulsory education system and discuss whether it is really necessary.
What is the purpose of education? Many of us answer this question as “informing the generations, enlightening them, improving their problem solving capacities…”. Or similarly, they talk about word games. If so, why do young people grow up as individuals who are unhappy, away from empathy, highly-competitive, and disrespectful to nature? Why are they mostly in a consumption-based thought system? Moreover, how many teachers are aware of this?
While teachers under economic pressure think and wait for how to reach the end of the month economically, at this time, it is very unlikely to wait for an answer to these questions.
Let’s examine the situation in another way. Do the exams and grading system really measure children’s success and ability? No way. The child with a high score is a candidate individual that will be most suitable for the desired society. In short, the notes measure the degree of suitability to society, not the representation of knowledge. Others are already eliminated. In addition, children who will play games, strengthen their communication, and perhaps meet the opposite sex for the first time outside the family, are given the urge to compete directly through notes, which is a very wrong practice.
Brutal competition creates an imperative for people to be successful at all times. Students have started to use Ritalin, Aderall and similar chemicals in order to be more successful in schools and get high grades. These are the causes of the instinct of exclusion which brought by system. In a way, it led the masses to drug addiction to achieve idealized success.
So what is the industrial output of this? I want to answer this question by quoting from John Taylor Gatto’s book (I also got the title of the article from his book) James Bryant Conant of Harvard University said, “schools are no longer the place of humble passions that revolve around reading, writing arithmetic and morality (doing the right thing at the right time). It was transformed into a behavioral training laboratory that changed the nature of the industrial process and was ordered upon the order of certain innovators and industrialists. ” It is very appropriate… The current system will need manpower to ensure continuity, in other word, educational institutions are the best way for it. Anyway, what is done here is to select the people suitable for the system by competing the people mercilessly. The moral, cultural and questioning abilities of man, when we think at a macro scale, are worthless and contrary dangerous in the consumption economy we are in. In short, the concept of compulsory education is like a holy place of worship in ensuring the continuity of the consumption economy.The consumption economy imposes that people should consume more in order to be happy. Buy more, spend more… The reason why people are more fragile today is because of their alienation. People now spend most of their time in shopping malls. Reputation criteria are more expensive phones and more elegant shoes. The answers to why we are like this are actually in education.
There is also another dimension in terms of states, as well. Let’s ask ourselves sincerely: Do states really want individuals who are independent, not easily persuaded, resistant to propaganda and manipulations, who show their reaction, and have the ability to make unbiased evaluations away from political ideologies? I think you have a smile too. Almost none of the governments in the world (also for the margin of error) would want individuals with this ability. These people are dangerous for governments. What they use to eliminate this danger is hidden in motivation laboratories called compulsory education. People who are easily guided and in hidden ignorance are always preferred. We can compare this to modern military training to provide some kind of discipline.
So how can we solve this problem or minimize its damages? Compulsory education is so dangerous, how can we fight while putting the person in monotonus and vicious cyle? There are great duties for parents. First of all, children should gain a habit of reading books. Especially children tend to copy behaviors in their families. Thus, they should talk to them that they spend quality time with them and that their education is not only at school but that it is a continuing phenomenon. In addition, they need to discuss many issues and open their view. Thus, more productive, healthy and creative people can emerge. As in the past, today there are people – especially in technology companies – who have abandoned their education and achieved serious positions.
As a result, it is seen that the main purpose of compulsory education is to shape people according to uniform and patterns. Paddling against the current is difficult but not impossible, especially in the current system.
For some reason, I came to mind Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall”