The Problem With Education

To start out, I’m not a teacher.  I don’t have any basis of saying what does work in regards to schooling or what sort of system should replace what we currently have.  I’m merely able to look back on my experiences in high school and college and see things that gall me and things that are completely missing.  

After obtaining a high school degree and then a bachelor's, and then interacting with genuinely educated individuals, I’ve found that outside of the area of my major, I’m almost entirely uneducated.  I’m living in Western Civilization, but for some reason my education didn’t include a single one of the philosophers or historians whose ideas served as pillars of this civilization.  If I’ve ever read Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine, Machiavelli, Aquinas, or any others, it’s because I’ve done so on my own.  I’m sure that list that I came up with off the top of my head should be longer, but honestly I wouldn’t have even named those that I did without any self education.  

I learned nothing at all of philosophy, only the briefest outline of history, and read something like 3 books of any literary note.  Which I could forgive if it were not for the way time was spent instead of reading great literary works, philosophy, and more history.  Instead of doing those things, we read short story fluff, learned how write research papers (which would be fine if the focus had been research rather than an autistic obsession with proper formatting), and the oh so importing history of African tribes.  Remember, just because their history doesn’t matter doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter.  

After high school I decided I would like to be a man with a well rounded education, so I went to get a 4 year degree in computer science.  Yet still, I finished it without reading a single book by a single foundational philosopher, historian, or even novelist in western thought.  Not one.  I did have a class that taught how good people communicate using I language because that avoids conflict though.  So there’s that.  

I don’t have children.  But if I ever do, they will never set foot in any of the education institutions we have now.  And hopefully by the time I have them, I will be far enough along in my self remedial education to know how and what to teach them.