This Is Why You Should Never Respect Any Schools or Colleges

The Reason Behind the Greatest Mental Health Epidemic That No One Talks About

Educational institutions have destroyed more lives than everything else combined. To be honest, I don't think it's just a hyperbole.  

The Thought Experiment 

In schools, everything is the same for everyone. Everyone is supposed to study the same subjects, take the same exams, and answer the same questions.

Let's switch it up a bit. Let's imagine everyone is taught and tested on their ability to run a 100m race. I can already imagine you screaming at me that it's not fair. Some are just born with a higher percentage of fast-twitch muscle fibers and the ideal body type for excelling at 100m races. A 100m race is not the only event or sport. Shouldn't we give students a chance to compete in different activities so they can find their strengths and excel? And I tell you...nah! We'll do that after 12-15 years of school. And you tell me, so you will make them feel like a loser for over a decade at a stage of their life when their brain is still developing! It will ruin their self-esteem and confidence for the rest of their life! 

Performing well in schools and on standardized tests has more to do with being lucky than being smart. Some people are just more comfortable with rote learning, memorization, and adherence to a predetermined syllabus, even though that is not very useful in the real world.

The One-Size-Fits-All Problem

The current education system takes a one-size-fits-all approach that does not account for students' diverse talents and interests. Pushing every child through the same rigid academic structure for over a decade, with little flexibility, sets many up for frustration and failure.

During adolescence, young people's identities and self-concepts are shaped in large part by their experiences of success, accomplishment, and external validation. Yet our standardized testing and competitive grading tell some students, "You do not measure up," at this critical life stage.

Is it any wonder that by high school, engagement and motivation plunge? Depression and anxiety rates have skyrocketed. The drive to learn gives way, for far too many teens, to a desire only to perform well on tests.

It's a system that measures success by very narrow metrics, and forces every student to try to excel in the same areas, whether or not they have an aptitude for those things. It's almost like a system designed to create a sense of inadequacy in students, since by definition, most of them won't be the "best" at any of the things they're judged by. This system is designed to create conformity and discourage individuality, rather than nurturing students' unique passions and talents. It’s rigged against you right from the beginning.

My Story

I went to the local stadium and joined a martial arts class the very next day after my 10th board exams ended. There was nothing exceptional about me. I was a very average kid.

During this phase of learning martial arts, I experienced an epiphany: Learning martial arts didn't feel like a chore or a struggle. It just felt natural and effortless and I didn't have to force myself to keep at it. My interest in martial arts was so strong that my discipline and willpower just came along for the ride.

I was falling in love with the process of learning something new, a feeling that was foreign to me until then. I realized that learning doesn’t have to be stressful. Quite the opposite - it should be joyful, exciting, and deeply rewarding.

It wasn't just about martial arts anymore; it was about understanding how to learn or meta-learning. This was something my school never taught me. The skills I gained have served me well. I now replicate that self-driven learning mindset in everything I do, with great success. The art of learning that I learned while learning martial arts gave me a framework to become proficient at any pursuit I put my mind to.

I wasn't just getting better at martial arts; I was becoming a master at the art of learning itself. Martial arts unlocked my potential and showed me the path of lifelong learning.

The Blunder

The schools, the society, the parents, and the teachers put way more stress on what to learn without ever providing any motivation or inspiration to kids. It's not enough for schools to say "Here's the information, memorize it." What really matters is the "why" - the reason to care about the material in the first place. Without that intrinsic motivation, students are left to just slog through the material without appreciating or understanding its importance.

'What to learn' is really not that important at that age. At a young age, the emphasis should be on developing a love of learning, developing curiosity, and learning how to think. Things like critical thinking, problem-solving, and creativity should be emphasized. And all of that can be done without hitting kids over the head with dry facts. In fact, hitting them with dry facts can actually turn them off from learning!

Not just that! Our brain is the most plastic at that age. Do you really want to waste that phase of your life memorizing dry facts? This is the critical period of brain development when the foundations for all future learning are being established. Instead of trying to get kids to cram facts into their brains, we should focus on getting them excited about the process of learning itself, which brings us to the concept of overfitting.

Overfitting

Let’s make some non-intuitive connections.

Overfitting is a concept in machine learning where a model is tuned too closely to the details of the training data, and as a result, fails to generalize well to new data. This is analogous to what often happens in education - students are trained too narrowly on specific sets of facts and test-taking skills, without developing more generally applicable critical thinking and problem-solving abilities.

Just as overfitted machine learning models fail when presented with new data, overfitted students struggle when faced with novel situations that require creativity and applying knowledge in new ways. They've been narrowly optimized for performing well on standardized tests.

This robs young learners of the chance to develop a rich, complex understanding of the world, in all its unpredictability and nuance.

To crack any exam, you have to overfit yourself to the curriculum. Overfitting is neither good for artificial intelligence nor for human intelligence, and yet it is celebrated in our society, which raises the question: Is it merely a reflection of herd mentality?

Everyone is incentivized to conform and perform well on tests, rather than think outside the box. It's a system that values following the rules and getting the "right" answer over creativity and true understanding.

The real world is wild, messy, ever-changing, and ambiguous, so students need to be prepared to adapt and think flexibly. Standardized tests and rote learning aren't the best way to do that.

What’s the Solution?

Topping in school is not an achievement because you are competing against people who are uninterested. You got lucky that the current education system speaks to you when it doesn’t for the majority of the population. It says nothing about one’s inherent intelligence.

The industrialized, one-size-fits-all education model made sense 100 years ago when we needed factory workers. I understand that for many, it’s close to impossible to escape it completely but that doesn’t mean that you have to respect it. That’s step 1. When you don’t respect something, it has no power over you.

Break free from the grip that the existing education system has on your mind. You need to regain a sense of agency and belief in your own potential, regardless of how the traditional system tries to define your worth. Create your own curriculum that’s relevant to the present and the near future.

We are living in the 21st century, not the 19th, which means moving away from standardized curriculums, simplistic metrics of intelligence, and environments that demotivate you.

Each student has the power to take learning into their own hands. Rather than feel constrained by standardized curriculums, one can create their own program of study tailored to their interests and aspirations.

Measuring self-worth based on academic metrics like grades or test scores gives away one's agency. The ultimate marker of achievement is how one applies their abilities to make a meaningful difference in the world. Everything else is artificial, more like a model.

The individual freedom to take charge of one's learning and contribution holds more power than waiting for the system to change.

Focus on individual agency over systemic change.