4 Extremely Wrong Things We Are Taught in School
To truly learn, you must first unlearn
Schools are supposed to educate us, but they do the exact opposite.
What makes it worse is all that wrong “knowledge” is drilled into our heads throughout our formative years — this makes unlearning much more of a challenge.
“Life gets really simple once you cut out all the bullshit they teach you in schools.”
— George Carlin
Only after you unlearn and “de-internalize” most of what you’re taught growing up can you embark on the journey of true learning. Here are 4 such things.
Straight F’s? You’re Dumb.
Throughout school, I effortlessly topped almost every single exam. This plus constantly being called gifted made me extremely arrogant.
But college humbled me. I met many people as smart if not smarter. And not all of them had good grades. In fact, most had average and even poor grades.
There’s very little correlation between smartness and good grades— a close friend, who’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever known barely passes his exams. My brother who’d been “below average” is on road to becoming a skilled doctor.
“Grades measure nothing other than your relevant obedience to a manager.” — John Taylor Gatto
Good grades “might” indicate intelligence, but poor grades definitely don’t signify its lack.
Albert Einstein, whose very name is synonymous with genius was thought to be mentally handicapped in school. Thomas Edison was told he was “too stupid to learn anything” in school. Billionaire rapper Jay Z had to drop out before graduating. Music tycoon Simon Cowell barely passed exams.
There are tons of other examples — intelligence is far too complex and diverse to be measured by any kind of exam. As Albert Einstein famously said,
“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
Thou Shalt Not Question
In school, my inquisitiveness was rewarded with variants of these three replies:
- You don’t need to know that. It’s not there in the syllabus.
- Gosh! Stop asking such stupid doubts.
- Are you trying to mock me? Do you think you know better?
The mix of discouragement and shame buried my curiosity and only during college did it climb back out of the grave — but unfortunately, for most others, it stays dead.
In fact, schools and our “education” systems were first designed to produce docile, unquestioning beings for society. And what better way than to kill the urge to question?
All to ensure you don’t “think” your way out of the rat race and conditioning.
But it’s the thinkers and dreamers that run the world and turn the gears of humanity’s progress — Nikola Tesla that lit up the world, Elon Musk wanting to take us to Mars, Aryabhata that invented the digit zero, Peter Thiel championing the quest for immortality, etc.
Thinking is a superpower that anyone can leverage. And questioning is the key that unlocks it — so no matter how dumb or trivial you think a question is, shoot it.
“He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever.”
— Confucious
Compare. Compete. Repeat.
No two people will ever have the same life trajectory. Period.
How then does competing with others make sense? But with score and rank-based exams, that’s exactly what schools have drilled into us — the “beat the person with higher grades” mentality.
This comparison mindset bleeds into every aspect of life. A friend earning more than you will chafe you. You’ll gloat when you earn more. Your longtime buddy bought his first car? You better buy a more expensive one soon.
This wreaks hell on your mental health — irrespective of how much you achieve, you won’t be satisfied.
As no matter how high you climb the ladder of life, there’s always someone “higher up”.
You’ll be stuck running on the hedonistic treadmill — chasing after happiness but staying miserable. Get off this treadmill and start running on the ground of life — in your own path and at your own pace.
There’s only one person worth competing with — your past self. And success is nothing but → your present self minus your past one.
A High Paycheck = Financial Success
Schools leave us literate in mostly useless things and illiterates in the necessary ones such as money.
With over 75% of us being financial illiterates, no wonder the popularity of the myth that your salary will make you rich — it won’t. Do you know what will?
Careful budgeting, disciplined saving, and prudent investments.
Say you earn $100k a year, spend $80k, and let the remaining $16k sit in your savings bank account. How much will you have in 20 years? — $320k.
But by then, thanks to inflation, that money would be worth less than $100k in today’s terms.
Now, say you earn $50k a year, spend $34k, and invest the rest. In 10 years, thanks to the magical power of compounding, even at a conservative 10% yearly rate of return, you’d have a whopping million dollars!
“Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it … he who doesn’t … pays it.” — Albert Einstein
As long as you live paycheck to paycheck, you’ll never be free of money — no matter how high the pay. So, stop working for money and make money work for you.
Budget, save, invest, and repeat until you become financially independent. And then you will truly be free to do whatever you want.