As we grow up in this world, we are taught from childhood that the educational system is the most important tool in society. If you choose not to use it, you risk not having a career and working a low-paying job, such as bussing tables or cleaning toilets. Some people even look down at you for simply not having a high school diploma or a college degree, automatically considering you a failure.

There are, of course, exceptions to the rule. Take those who have rich and successful parents: people who choose to overlook their educational experiences simply because of their connections with the top echelons of society. Then there are those who have created their own successful businesses. If you want to be seen as an intelligent person in this world, it is fairly simple in theory: just have money, a degree, or connections.  

This leads me to the educational system and how wrong it is to let it define your success or your dreams. The educational system in the United States is a controlled, economical scheme. To quote a once extraordinarily rich and famous man who owned the railroads at the time, John D. Rockefeller, “I don’t want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers.” He created the general education board (GEB) of 1902 to achieve this callous agenda of conformity.i

The general education board of 1902 is still highly influential in all of our school systems to this day. It was established by Rockefeller for, “the promotion of education within the United States, without distinction to race, sex, and creed.”ii Rockefeller, who believed in a nation of workers rather than thinkers, created and funded an education system that was designed to turn an influx of poorly educated people into workers. Is it any wonder that passion and innovation is highly discouraged in this country?

To make matters worse, the GEB (alongside the Carnegie Foundation) also reformed the medical community to abide by a monetary standard of medical treatment and segregation of medical practices. It all began when Rockefeller realized he could use petrochemicals from his petroleum refineries to be regarded as one of the only medicinal treatments for diseases and health-related problems. iii Without failure, he eventually turned the medical community into a money-making scheme with the help of Abraham Flexner, who later joined the GEB as its secretary.

Flexner, who was hired by the Carnegie Foundation, had a bachelor’s degree in classics. He had no prior experience or training in the medical community at all, but went on to write the Flexner report, which highly criticized and changed the medical community forever. To sum up certain parts of his report, he said that there were “too many doctors” and that the use of natural medicine was “quackery.”iv When his report became well known, he was at pains to ensure that medical schools followed a stricter academic curriculum that made them much less accessible. His report also led a shutdown of many black medical schools, as it stated that black physicians should only serve as “sanitarians.”v Even to this day, very few black medical schools exist.

With the success of the Flexner report, Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie (another rich monopolist at the time) only funded medical schools which promoted and taught allopathic medicine. In turn, this discouraged, and almost entirely got rid of, any other medical practices such as naturopathic, homeopathic, holistic, and herbal. The competition was virtually annihilated.

The school system is heavily influenced by money, and not influenced by the needs of the people. The fact that Rockefeller, Carnegie, Flexner, and other notable people had so much influence on our education system and medical practices tells you much about the interests (or lack of) they had for the common person. I find it hard to believe that we still go through this system that has not been reformed in more than a hundred years.

Do not get me wrong; the primary school helps us tremendously when we are starting off in the world. But we must start exploring our most innovative and passion-filled selves while we are in our youth. We should be learning how to pursue our dreams and passions while only learning essential knowledge such as English, reading, writing, and basic math. Not useless information that does not help us get by in life.

Think about all the things you learnt from middle school to high school. How much of the information do you use in your daily life now? You probably cannot recall most things. In fact, 84% of people said they learned things in school they have never utilized after they graduated.vi A school’s purpose should be to teach important life subjects such as personal development, making money, doing taxes, cooking, helping people, and pursuing dreams and passions. Those subjects will help students grow into young successful adults in the real world.

Schools Kill Passions and Dreams

Many students who go through school are told that being distracted is a bad thing. In some ways, it is. But being kept in school against our will for hours each weekday takes a toll on us. We cannot possibly do the things that we love. We cannot pursue our own dreams. And, most importantly, we cannot discover ourselves. This “educational” system potentially destroys our current and future passions and dreams, and yet we are told that our grades predict our future. Research has even shown that over these same decades, creative thinking has declined at all grade levels; and anxiety, depression, and suicide among young people have increased.vii When passions are taken out of your life, you are left with a lack of purpose which often leads to a lack of life.

School should not withhold students from pursuing their passions and dreams in life. Imagine living the majority of your youth while in school, being told that you should only work on what they give you and to not be “distracted” by your passions. Potentially, failing to pursue any of your passions may make you feel like you have no purpose in life. And, in reality, some of us do not. Many schools breed the idea that having a degree and a job is far more important than pursuing passions that might not have a tangible benefit.

When we are not at school, we are easily over encumbered with homework, studying, and writing essays. The average student literally has little to no free time to work on themselves. It is no wonder there are so many students that are stressed out daily. A study conducted from Anxiety and Depression Association of America identified that 80% of U.S. students report feeling stressed sometimes or often, while 34% felt depression.viii These numbers are overwhelming but not surprising. Our mental health is often affected by the constant stress received by from school and the issues students face in their personal lives.

But how would we recognize that school is a potential deterrence to our passions and dreams when we have been conditioned to believe that school is one of the most important gateways to success? One reason is the negative influence of the GEB. Another is our society’s emphasis on the poor, and even some of the rich, going to college rather than doing the things that they love in life (if those things are unrelated to academics).

Even though school has the power to take up much of your time when you are young, you can only worry about the time you do have and what you can do with it. Make every single minute count if you are still attending school, whether you are in grade school or college. The things you could achieve from pursuing your very own mission will teach you far more than school. You cannot let school interfere. You must nurture that desire within yourself to do what you think is right and that of which aligns with your life purpose.

The right thing is to always do what makes you (and possibly others) happy. School has an agenda for your academic life, not necessarily your personal life and potential dreams. School is not meant to better you in terms of self-development and pursuing dreams. You have to do that. If you want to achieve your dreams, you are the only one who can do it.

When I was a child, I sometimes loved to draw, write stories, think of things to create, etc. But what I really loved was helping people in need. I aspired to help people around the world who were financially struggling or suffering due to not having basic necessities such as food, water, and shelter. If in school I had been taught how to accomplish these things—and how to make money—I would value and cherish the educational system in unimaginable ways. But I was not. School does not teach us the things that matter.

I grew up living in a rental car with my dad and brother, homeless on the streets of Honolulu, Hawaii. That lifestyle opened my eyes at the age of seven. It put me in a position some children at that age would never be in or learn from. When you do not have the luxury of taking a real shower, but instead have to apply Germ-X on your body, you quickly realize the futility of the things you are being taught in school.

With all of that happening, I was still forced to go to school. But I was not learning the things I needed to know, such as how to make money, how to help out my family, and how to escape living in a rental car. As a child at the time, my priorities were determined by others, not by what was important for me and my family. At the end of the day, the wants of society are far more important than the needs of the individual.

I would go to class every weekday and learn from our “teacher.” Keep in my mind that my teacher was a seventy-year-old lady. She was very frail, had short hair, and wore glasses. She was well respected by her peers and even won the teachers’ award. You would think she was a nice person who knew a lot about teaching. But that was not the case.

When it was time to learn math, I was picked on because I did not understand how to do addition the University of Chicago way. I knew how to add by carrying the one, not by adding across. I was told I was wrong on every addition problem, and I was humiliated all because I did not learn how to do it her way. She shamed me more than she taught me. That was the first time in my life I knew the educational system had failed me.

School is the death of passion and innovation. It does not encourage you to think outside the box or to pursue your dreams. If you want to pursue your dreams, then do your personal minimum while in school, and then spend your remaining time and energy on something you want in your life. If your dream requires education, then, of course, give it your all during school. The educational system will move on, even if you fail or succeed, so do something you are passionate about—something that makes you excited every day. Something that makes a good impact on this world and you.

I will quote a story that a very brilliant and creative man once told the world: “When I was five years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down, ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.” These words are often attributed to John Lennon. If we all had this mentality, many of us would probably live out our rock star dreams like he did. But the educational system cannot teach you how to be happy or to live out your dreams—because the system is not meant to do that.

Henry Ford, a man who did not graduate high school, went on to become one of the world’s top entrepreneurs. If he had stayed in school, ignored his passion for creating cars, and failed to be one of the first to create the automotive assembly line, he would not have left an impact on the world. He knew that school would not teach him anything about cars, so he went on to get jobs and apprenticeships with various automotive companies to learn, experience his passion, and live out his dream of making cars.

The Wright brothers did not receive a high school diploma, but they went on to become very well-known inventors of the first flying airplane. Their lack of education within the school system did not prevent them from achieving success and their dreams. They were brilliant men who learned how to accomplish this never-before-seen task all on their own. And, when they accomplished this, they set a legacy for the world and an endless number of generations to come.

Even if your dream is academic, look at the general education and prerequisite classes you must take in college. All undergraduate majors require some type of general education classes such as English, PE, writing, art, and US history. The typical student takes more than four years of similar classes before college, and then they must take it once again in in order to graduate.

If the educational system really emphasized a desire for students to succeed and pursue their dream jobs, then they would not charge such absurd tuition fees or require students to take the same classes they took in high school. I believe all public colleges should be free (our tax dollars already go towards paying for these institutions), and classes should be specific to the students’ majors—with no biased grading system.

Obtaining a college degree also does not guarantee employment. In fact, in 2020, 42.6% of all recent college graduates were underemployed, with the unemployment rate siting at 3.8%. That means almost half the students that earn a degree cannot get the jobs that they went to school for.ix

Within college courses, we might also get these professors who know so much more than us in their specialty, but treat us poorly. As students, we desire to have a professor with intimate knowledge of the subject being taught. But there is a difference between being proficiently educated and proficiently ignorant. And, with some professors and even grade schoolteachers, they are not willing to understand certain situations that students may face.

Read what I experienced with my college art professor:

It had been almost a week into my sophomore year of college, and I added a course titled, “Art: Studio Design 2D. This was a late add, but within the grace period with no penalty on my college transcript. When I first attended the class, I was met by an unfriendly art professor. She told me she would penalize me for adding the class late by counting one out of two absences during the time I was not enrolled. In the syllabus, it explained that two absences would automatically make the student lose half a letter grade. I did not realize or contest this until the next class.

On my second day, I spoke to the professor about how I would miss a day of class in the future because of my military obligations. She did not blink, immediately responding with, “It’s still going to count as an unexcused absence, and it will drop your grade half a letter.” I was taken aback and, with no signs of anger, pressed on with questions, such as: “How is that an unexcused absence?”

“You chose to join the military; therefore, you chose to miss class,” she told me. “You will be marked absent regardless.”

I could no longer contain my anger, so I raised my voice to let her know that what she was doing was wrong: “How are you going to penalize me because I’m in the military? I did choose to serve my country, and I can’t believe some art professor who didn’t serve is telling me that my obligation is optional and not a valid excuse to miss art class,” I said sternly. “And me being penalized half a letter grade when classes started just seven days ago is not fair at all.”

She repeated the same reasoning, and it made me more impatient.

“This is why I don’t like art in school. Not because I hate creativity, but because of the teachers who focus on the wrong things. You guys penalize students for not designing the art the way you want it, even if the intention shows. And you also do not allow students to make their own art designs, which is what art should be all about. On top of that, you’re penalizing me for adding the class late and telling me that my service is optional.”

She became furious and started yelling, “I have been teaching art for over twenty years! You talk about how art is graded based on bias when it states in the syllabus that art is graded by participation and effort, which make up sixty percent! The other forty percent is based on how well the student does the design!” (Which, by the way, is bias grading.) “You should be grateful that I am giving you so many points for accomplishing the art projects and that I’m not counting that one absence from the add/drop grace period against you!”

“I am not grateful because I’ve been penalized from the start of the class,” I responded. “You have been teaching art for over twenty years, and you can’t manage to understand a student’s situation.”

I turned my back on her and walked out of the classroom. She was still yelling at me when I exited, but I no longer had the patience to stay and listen to her. I withdrew from the class and fought the school on how it should not affect my transcript. I ended up winning the case and got the military veterans affair involved.

Even though my situation was a little more extreme than that of an average student, I saw how corrupted these teachers can be and how they can fail to realize that their experience does not give them the right to treat students unfairly. Teachers should never use their profession to intimidate a student whose purpose (whether academic or personal) relies on the grading or feedback of their peers, and they should always look at a student’s circumstance from an unjudgmental and logical point of view.

There are some teachers in this world who think that, just because they have a degree in teaching and have been doing it for X number of years, they have the right to treat their students poorly and conduct bias grading. They take their job as an entitlement and a privilege to tell students that and award the student whatever grade they feel is right, instead of what is actually deserved. These teachers are catastrophic for a student whose goal is to achieve the grade that they actually deserve in order to pursue their academic dream.

A school’s weakness: self-development & self-independence

Passion and innovation cannot be developed by the traditional educational system. It is not structured for CEOs or young innovators. If it were, it would allow kids, teenagers, and young adults the opportunity to have more free time outside of school to think, discover, research, create, and test out their passions and innovations. Unfortunately, young students spend most of their time within the classroom, never achieving their fullest potential.

Schools do not take the time to develop the ability of students to think and act on their own within the classroom. Teachers determine when students can go to the bathroom, when they can talk, what they should spend their time on, and when they can leave the classroom. It is an odd sense of overwhelming power that is enforced upon young students who are required to attend school. Students never gain the independence to make decisions, even when they reach high school. Teachers control everything a student does, never letting them explore, think, or innovate within the classroom if it is not related to the assignment. And, unfortunately, this goes on until a student graduates from high school.

Schools only challenge and prepare a student academically rather than preparing them for life. Essential knowledge of how to survive the real world is tossed to the side and utterly ignored. If schools are to help a student truly succeed in life, they should not entirely focus on inessential academic knowledge.

Instead, they should focus on self-development and self-independence. These are essential to learning and adapting for life. If you do not take time to learn and improve in the poor areas of your life, how can you expect to pursue your passions and dreams? And, if you do not have the courage to do things on your own, how will you get through life? Without these two life habits, you most likely cannot do your best in academic education either.

School and society in general label self-development as a bad thing because it could mean we lack basic life skills such as how to cook, how to be a better public speaker, and how to be confident. The truth is each one of us can improve something in our personal lives, but we do not spend time on it because we are constantly preoccupied doing something unimportant for someone or something else.

The educational system is a major roadblock to many students having any free time to work on personal development, discovering potential passions, and pursuing dreams. Students are told that these things should be learned from parents, friends, etc. But some students were not born knowing or having those around them to help improve their lifestyle.

We should let the educational system cut back on all the trivia to focus instead on sharpening and discovering life skills and passions. Learning about self-development is crucial to maturity, and there are many reasons to do so: it forces you out of your comfort zone; it develops your strengths; it boosts your confidence; and it improves your self-awareness.x Self-development has always been the key to becoming a great individual or leader.

Self-independence is also key to becoming a great individual or leader. However, self-independence is skewed in the educational system. They teach an extremely strict version of it—and it is horrendous. It does not necessarily mean that you should never ask for any help from someone else; it means you should mostly rely on your own resources and only ask for help when you need to. In school, however, they teach that asking those around for assistance on a test is bad—it is considered cheating. But, in real life, we would ask for help when stuck on a problem, not just skip it, or knowingly get it wrong.

Teamwork, or collaboration, is the foundation of every country and every successful entrepreneur. It is also part of becoming self-independent. According to hbr.org, “In workplaces where employees had to share responsibility for specific products and services, managers reported increased productivity levels and better quality of products and services.”xi When it comes to your dreams, you must be willing to ask for help in those areas where you are not strong. Teamwork, or assistance of some sort, is crucial to self-independence.

The combination of self-development and self-independence is feared by schools. If you possess these two life skills, you are not dependent upon the educational system. You know what you want to do and how to do it. This is why it is not taught in the “general education” curriculum. Many problems would be solved personally, politically, socially, and economically if we implement this type of system within our schools. But it is not implemented. The system is built for you to not achieve your dreams or, worse yet, to not pursue happiness.

But no matter the present circumstances, we must still do our best at the age we currently are. We must learn and constantly improve the environment for ourselves and others if we are to pursue our dreams with minimum oppression. That is why if we are not able to rely on ourselves to obtain knowledge, or we do not have the ability to improve our decisions, we will never move forward on our dreams and our lives.

The ideal educational system that you can create for yourself should mostly consist of reading books, learning from mentors, watching relevant educational videos, and experiencing many diverse subjects centered on benefiting yourself and society. If you are able to effectively create, seek, and use these resources, you will no doubt be able to teach yourself (and even teach others) the things that are important.