Why We Shouldn't Study

I had a sort of a revelation two weeks ago. As with almost all somewhat meaningful revelations I've had, it turned out a lot of people have already had this revelation a long time ago. I've researched what other people have thought about it a bit, but what I'm writing here is strictly stuff I've thought of all by myself.

Basically, I realised that education is much more than meets the eye. I realised that there exists a hidden agenda, that society has an ulterior motive. My earlier view was that we go to school to learn, to be educated. I wasn't naive enough to believe that we are educated for our own benefit. I could see that society is a self-propagating thing, and for this it requires us to be educated. However, I hadn't understood the reason why we are rewarded for working harder. This is something that lies at the very foundation of the meritocratic world we live in. We have touched upon this in class while discussing equality, the concept of libertarian equality in particular. Anyway, my point is that our educational system is just a huge machine that is designed to separate people into different social strata depending on how well they do. This separation is done on the basis of how hard someone works and their natural endowment of grey cells.

This system does not exist everywhere, but as the world becomes more and more developed it will spread. When people no longer need to worry about subsistence, then they will become a part of the global educational conspiracy. The fact that I was born into a middle-class family means that from birth I was consigned to one day being a part of this system. This global educational conspiracy feeds directly into all parts of society. The criminals in society are dropouts. The factory workers are those who did not make it as far as university. The executives working in the corporations are those who made it to the top. It is a machine that will always benefit those who are born with higher than average intelligence and, to a lesser extent, those who are born rich. It works on the basis that we are born unequal.

My gut feeling would be to fight this system, even though I am so deeply embroiled in it. Since the system is based on grades, the smartest way to do this, in my opinion, would be to abolish grading. We might achieve this by not studying. That would be one method, but it would not be the method I'd choose. Along with pretty much everyone who's reading this, I'm going to have to slog my way through the system, and hopefully I'll beat it by coming out on top. Or I could become a rockstar. Yes, I think I'll do that.