Today I want to describe to you the way governments abuse the educational system and deceive its citizens of the idea of meritocracy. I will use Israel and UK as the main examples, but the arguments apply to almost all other countries. I will break the argument to bullet points: 1) Cost The cost of education should be lower than it is. That fact is true for the great majority of countries and for almost all levels of education. So why is cost higher? That is because governments impose the student to learn more subjects than is needed. So in Israel you have to study Torah (religious studies) from grade 1 to 12. That mandatory nonsense forces parents to take money out of their pockets and buy more teaching hours their child doesn't need. The same principle applies to many of the other subjects like history, literature, music, sports, civil studies, chemistry, biology, physics. The student is forced eat out of the teacher (governments agents) hand for 12 years, students are expected to fling themselves into any class or school activity with perfect compliance and obedience. In Israel there is a constant assessment system, in which a student has to take multiple tests every week a few months after the start of the academic year. Parents simply have no choice over the number and type of subjects their child will learn and have their wing clipped. Worse, less resources go into important subjects like maths and language building subjects, all of which reduces the value parents get for the education they pay for. Governments don't even build bridges with parents so that they understand education better. Why is that? why governments regulate financial institutions with so many regulations, but education is so expensive in some countries, why shouldn't it be regulated? 2) Psychology Large number of subjects, especially, those not desired by the student are imposed on him. That leads to reduction in performance in certain subjects, which makes many students hate school. Students groan inwardly when they start school and haul over the coals for being disobedient in any slight manner such as being late or expressing an opposing view. Think about, lets say you are good at maths and like to learning geography, chemistry and physics. How much would you like school if subjects such as sports, civil studies, history, literature, religious studies and sociology were added? Would you keep your nose to grindstone at school? Politicians impose that top down system. Just because a politicians were elected it doesn't give them the right to suppress the market forces acting in education at all levels. 3) Good Citizens Production The next issue relates to the fact that politicians think to themselves that they want to produce the next best citizen by forcing him to study subjects and topics that he doesn't like.. simply cram into him selected material. I studied history and torah for 12 years. I barely remember anything from the history I studied (including Roman Empire, Greek Empire, Russian revolution, Industrial revolution, Jewish civil war at Roman conquest and Zionism) and I don't know Torah more than you (all I remember is that David fought Goliath, the Paroah and Mosses story and the story with Abraham talking with God)! Why do they force me to learn religion any way!?!? Politicians themselves don't know or remember greater deal of details more than me?!?! 4) Economy This is the biggest thing that concerns politicians and also the biggest thing they try to promote by deceiving the public. Education is perceived as a merit good (a good/service whose demand is not as high as it should be) as opposed to demerit good (like drugs, prostitution and smuggled weapon). Politicians do this by showing deceptive statistics and telling lies about how education is important in making you a smarter individual and guarantees jobs to such an extent that there is no replacement to it. Politicians know that its public doesn't understand the difference between a correlation and a causal relationship? So they point to the fact that all its engineers, doctors, lawyers and judges have degrees.. and don't pay attention to the fact that for an individual it would be better to study things like graphics, animation, sound engineering/music, information management, administration, teaching, marketing, programming, networking, hacking, management, entrepreneurship, salesmanship and many other topics that they could do instead of opting for a rat race in which only the few reach the end with flying colors out of all the other job candidates with their piece of paper who came out of the woodwork. Governments are okay with the waste of unsuccessful workforce, because they just fed the kitty by spending money on education. Money that could be used to buy a car or a mortgage or some sex even. Another point, high school, an education level which should prepare students to be acceptable to university, is not efficient at producing potential candidates for university. The reason is that its number and quality of subjects is ludicrous so that students fail to get to top universities with their grades. I am an example of it. I wasn't able to get to a top Israeli uni because of that, but when I was in UK, I had the freedom to study the subjects that I wanted and therefore get good grades and get accepted to a top UK university, a university which is ranked higher than all the Israeli universities. Personally, I felt that my parents were the backseat drivers for so many years and I got so fed up and sick of the Israeli education system. I have 20 years of education behind me, among which 11 years in Israel primary and secondary school, 4 years in UK secondary school, 3 years in a top UK university and 2 years in a programming school. Today I am occupied as a hacker. I could have earned more money by learning to hack better instead of fouling my nest own nest by taking the academic route. No employer wants to talk to me about the schools I went to and the grades I got, so greasing the skids by formal education to becoming employable didn't work. I got only 2 potential employers who asked me about my grades (and another one in the military). I am even struggling to combine my business management degree with my 3 year experience in programming and then hacking to be an information security team leader/manager. I still bide my time, but I have fears that it will never come. I chanced my arm with that belief that education will get me the job I want and as more I live I understand that I lived in my own reality. The result of crossing the Rubicon, was a lose of time and youth (all my teens and 20s went on that educational crap). I went for 3 years of unemployment from which I barely bobbed up from. I had umpteenth interviews (100s), and I have all the knowledge and life experience to back up my arguments. My advice is don't dive headfirst, especially when it comes to starting high school or/and going to higher education. Don't drag your feet to boring lectures/classes. Don't eat dirt from all those people who live in a dogma in which education is the only way to guarantee you a well paying job. I used to go through the motions with education, and lost a lot of money and time. .. because I was comfortable in thinking that educating myself formally is the right and comfortable thing to do . I also went a few time into overdrive over exam anxiety and different tasks/courseworks, peer pressure, parent pressure, social expectations' sleeping patterns and social isolation, all of which made me almost go off the rails a few times. Today at age of 30, still going through a mid-life crisis I make no bones about education and wanted to share its dark truth. I hope I made you see reason. What are your thoughts?
