Our education system is a real good way to screw young people out of their time and skills. So much time, money, and resources are uselessly flung toward an institution that wishes to produce armies of people with the same exact learning base. It is so important that every student learn high algebra and intricate geometry when very few will ever use this beyond that year’s final exam. Kid’s trudge daily to schools built and operated on tax money so that they can graduate and work a simple laborers’ job. Why waste all that teen strength and time? The aspiring literary artist spends hours in science and math classes learning the reality of things and slowly chipping away at his sweet imagination. Now he must do his work at night fueled by caffeine and lamplight compromising the mental energy it takes to produce quality.

Students figure this fact out, some slower than others, but they all do eventually. The large majority of their time is being wasted trying to be “well-rounded”. So, school soon becomes a mandatory hobby and grades some all-powerful being that will somehow dictate our futures. If this keeps up there will be less and less “greats” as more and more well-rounded mediocrity is produced.

By setting “logical rules” on anything that requires moderate creativity imagination becomes very limited. In some people it is completely stomped out. A young writer very quickly becomes limited with strict mechanics and grammar laws. Even though he or she will later learn about style it has been pounded into their heads to long to follow the rules. Soon every work of literature may as well be written by nice little robots. Would it not be better to simply teach the writer how to spell words and set them out on their own? To meditate and read a wide variety of prior works in solitude, forming individual opinions and unique styles. A teacher would only be needed to tell the students to look inside their minds and through their eyes, which would be all. How grand!

How about the young carpenters and architects? If they could only be taught to drive a nail and cut a board then be set free, what new wonders would they create? Would we still be limited to tables and chairs, square buildings and windows and doors, uniform streets and perfect roads? No, there would soon be amazing structures and creations never imagined. Not simply alterations of previous discoveries, but discoveries.

It is now more important to live in a large house and have a full bank account than to leave a lasting impression on the world. For that is what they teach us in school in order to keep things very simple and organized for society. We can all live in little happy rows forever and ever with little disruption. Artists are told from the beginning that they had better not focus on art. It’s not a real job they say as they go to their little offices to circulate money around and do things that will be forgotten tomorrow.

We are here for a relatively short time and most of us are forgotten even faster. Maybe it’s not the worst thing in the world to live of rice and oatmeal while creating a masterpiece. Maybe it’s not the worst thing in the world to ramble around without a house for a while as you create something that can change the world. Maybe it’s not the worst thing in the world to skip a useless class and opt for a large book to learn something meaningful. But I wouldn’t know; I’m just a dumb kid, my parents told me.