I Hate Institutional Education

Most people don't remember much of their childhood, including me. But I have this one memory so hardcoded that I can't forget it for the rest of my life. It was my first day of school ever. My mom and my grandad (mom's dad) had come to drop me off. I was crying for my life, almost knowing that this was the worst decision anyone had ever made for me. I was crying like my life depended on it. I can still sense that fear, that anger, that weight of it every time I think about that memory. At the time, my mom ignored it, as you should, because no child wants to go to school. But that moment was a very crucial point for me. From that day onwards, till the end of my schooling years, is still to this day a huge fog, a gap in my memory. Probably because as soon as I ended school, I remember it was the last day, meaning after this I go to college and uni, I was the happiest I had ever been. That day when everyone else was crying because they were going to get separated and would miss the school days, I was the complete opposite. On that day I deleted almost every memory I had of those school years. I now only have a few left.

When I was in 7th grade onwards, I was enrolled in tuitions, this was after school hours. I hated that. I hated tuitions since I was a child, with so much passion and conviction. But I'll come to what my most hated thing is in a moment. Then I went to college, that's 11th and 12th, and I have no memories of it. I deleted them as I left. 12th standard is probably the most important year because after that you basically decide your career. I was not keen to go to IITs. I failed in a lot of tuition exams. But I scored really well in 12th, I was on all the merit lists when applying for universities in the science department. I was first on the merit list for BSc Physics. But I ended up doing engineering. Hated that shit too. In engineering though, something shifted, I became more spiritual, more awakened, and I pushed my capabilities so hard that I was a topper across all four years. But there was one crucial difference this time: I had threatened my parents against enrolling me in any tuitions. I told them I will do it on my own, I will learn on my own, I will figure it out on my own. After the first year they were like, yeah, if left alone he seems to be doing amazing, so let's not get involved. And they didn't.

Then I did my masters, and most of my good memories of education, the ones I actually hold onto, come from that time. It was the first time learning felt like mine. No one hovering. No one pushing. Just me, the subject, and the questions I actually wanted answered.

But after reading all of this you might be asking, where are you taking us? What's the point of all this? So here it is. I hate education. To be more specific, institutional education, institutions being schools, colleges, universities, tuitions. And I hate them with every ounce of willpower I have. My hate for them is deep-rooted. Funnily enough, we can compare my hate for institutional education to the same hate 50 Cent has towards Diddy. That level. That personal.

All the intelligence I have is an accumulation of my own interest in learning things, that tremendous curiosity I have towards understanding the world. I was watching Nat Geo at the age I should have been watching cartoons. I was reading science encyclopedias at the age people should be watching cartoons. I was deep into programming and music production at the age where people should be dating and enjoying their teenage years. I was into spiritual stuff, hippie stuff, philosophy, where normal people my age were doing group trips and having a social life. All of this happened because I was constantly watching, reading, absorbing science, technology, and philosophy. I was a typical nerd. And that's exactly why my hate for institutional education is almost counter-intuitive, because in school and on report cards, I was the most average kid you could imagine. Teachers knew I was extremely intelligent and would tell my mother constantly, "We know he's really good, but he just doesn't score." Not scoring was almost like a rebellion for me against this system.

The Indian education system, at least, forces everyone to learn for an exam. Rote learn everything. So all the toppers do is memorize what's best for the exam and become toppers. But here's the twist, it was usually me who was teaching and helping those toppers actually understand the concepts, because I had the least interest in exams. That's why I had lower scores and grades. My interest was in actually understanding how things work, why they work, how we can apply this. And that is the most crucial aspect of it all. These same people later move up in their careers and ask dumb questions like "I learned calculus in engineering, but what's the point of it and where do we use it?" Yeah. You wouldn't have asked that question if you had learned it out of genuine interest rather than to pass a fucking exam through rote learning.

As I move through my professional life, I see the extremely negative impact of that everywhere. People just don't have the capacity for critical thinking. And critical thinking is something you develop over years and years of practice, practice that should ideally start from school. But it doesn't. And here we are, working alongside someone who is in a field where logical thinking is the most crucial asset, and they simply don't have it. Critical thinking is also nurtured by genuine curiosity. Our education system dulls that curiosity down. By the end of it, we get a workforce that is non-curious. Why is curiosity important, you ask? Because it forces you to keep asking "why?", then the next why, then the next why. That is critical thinking. What's the impact of losing that curiosity and that critical thinking ability? Dumb people everywhere. People who don't have a shred of logical process in them. People who accept things as they are. People who accept things at face value. And most importantly, these people have kids, and those kids are raised with no curiosity, no interests, and are actively stopped from asking "why?" at every turn. And just like that, we produce a new generation of non-curious kids. The cycle continues.

So from day one to the end of my masters, my hate for these institutions has only grown. I was recently thinking about doing a PhD, I'm genuinely super interested in the research, but the first thing that came to my mind was that I'd have to go back to a university, and I was like, I can do research anyway, I don't need to risk going back there. Now don't get me wrong, I will still send my kids to school and university. My perspective is that these institutions are good for socializing, making friends, finding partners, learning real social skills, bullying others, getting bullied, dealing with rich and poor, learning how the world actually works. From that angle, they serve a purpose. But I will dedicate my own time and energy to actually teaching them myself, creating and nurturing that curiosity, and pushing them to ask a lot of "whys." I would be even happier if, with the rise of AI, the schooling system as a whole gets abolished and replaced with something that actually makes sense.

But this hate for institutions runs even deeper. I also hate corporates. I have a separate blog on that, check it out as well.