Stop Ranting — Changing Education System isn’t the answer

That’s right, stop unloading responsibility to external causes. I have been hearing these rants for long, mainly on the education system, and I am fricking sick of it. It’s time to unpack the hard truth.

Changing the Education System isn’t the answer. It’s you who has to change. You, as in, THE SOCIETY. It’s society that is at fault.

Alright, before you guys go all crazy and start questioning why is this socially awkward person who has zero clues on being a functioning member of this society has the right to tell this, please take some 4–5 minutes to hear me out, okay?

(Also, let me just educate you on the fact that I do have all the fricking rights to tell all these. This is my article, lol!)

Exploring the Problem

I have been observing and studying the “society” for various reasons. Mostly it’s to get a damn idea on how to be a “not so weird” member of it, but primarily, it’s kind of necessary career-wise too (pretty important for designers to empathize with the target user).

And one thing I continually notice is precisely what I mentioned — how people just shift the blame out of themselves (or anything they associate themselves with) to external causes.

I mean, it’s not a surprising observation, you might have seen it too.

You might have seen how people, without a second thought, comment on someone’s suicide, as a failure in their career/love, or maybe media influence? I don’t know, <insert typical reason they say, here>

When in fact they might have taken their life due to the glorious expectations the meritorious society shoved on their shoulder, which made them see any progress seem insignificant, and every failure a major fallback to their “expected” goal which kept on moving forward.

Not to mention how the “society” looks upon people who quote-unquote “failed”.

I am no one to talk about these, but yeah failure and other factors can influence bringing in suicidal thoughts (not going to say I never had them), but what ultimately makes them take the decision aren’t the factors.

Same with school shootings and violence by teenagers too. People say it’s video games or R-rated movies. What’s worse is how they are on interviews like, “He was a good boy, a smart kid when suddenly this happened. I don’t know what got into him. Oh! Yes, it’s those damn …. |beep|”.

I mean, video games might have taught him that you could do this and that, but most who play games after a certain age know it’s completely fiction.

Contrary to what you think, kids aren’t stupid, they are just inexperienced interns in the field of life.

So what ultimately makes them take the decision and give the adrenaline to bring forth such horrific acts? Well, you can decide on whether it’s the societal expectations, or the embarrassment from bullies, or the compressed emotions in their heart as they for some reason don’t have anywhere to dump them healthily.

And I don’t wanna get started with rape and other problems women have to face. I don’t think I am deserved to talk about these, but I can’t unsee the reality in which people just complain about media, games, porn or whatever, when infact they should be complaining about their male patriarchal society, where women tends to have a different set of rules and a completely different game of gaining “worth”.

The Point is…

The Point is, people, don’t want to think their society or culture is wrong. They by default think their society and culture are perfect, and anything new is what made it “impure”. Haven’t you heard the “it was all better before” trope?

Well, that’s the point. When you have such a target audience, would you expect the education system to change? And if it does, do you really expect the parents of the students NOT throw tantrums on the new and important changes?

There is a certain point to which the education system can evolve, before which they will be pushed back to the cage because they ain’t charity, they have to make the bucks. And dissatisfying their target market ain’t the way to stay profitable.

The Solution (at least for me)

“So what’s the solution?”. Well, wasn’t it apparent? Try changing society instead of the education system. Now you might ask, “How?”.

Firstly, asking this very question, makes you better than the part of the society who would backfire me with, “Who are you to say we need a change?”. So congrats 🥳. Now back to the solution.

The solution is to change and regulate the information that reaches the “society”. News, mainstream media (movies, newspapers, etc.), and importantly social media creators, must evolve the content & messages they pass onto their audience. They must start sharing/selling better stories, as stories are what shape us as a society.

Society is run by stories, which is not bad. It’s what made us cooperate on a large scale today and make us different from other animals.

For a Christian, killing someone is bad as they had believed in a story of Moses getting 10 commandments from their God, on a hill and the 6th one was “Don’t kill”. Another person believes in the story that the paper they call money, has the value written upon it. Thus helping him make trade with a stranger who he just met 5 minutes ago.

But we did develop bad narratives, which we do have to unlearn and subject ourselves to better ones. The content mainstream media and social media put out should bring out better and more progressive stories, and the news should stop adding unreasonable narratives/conclusions to existing stories.

The solution seems weird because that’s what most people of the ‘society’ hate or feel uncomfortable of, which brings me to the point that we as a society, have to accept new stuff, by incorporating a more open mind and not just let some story control you (be it scientific theories or how playing games starts violence).

Conclusion

What makes science better isn’t that it has logical proof for everything it puts out, rather it’s based on a belief that we “don’t know “. You could be wrong, I could be wrong, the culture we had been following years could be wrong, the expectations we put on ourselves might be what’s been wrong (more on that in another article), our actions could be wrong.

SO WHAT! Just correct it when you can recognize it, and if you are capable make the required change. Small changes we make do actually compound. Small drops do make the ocean. (not saying it’s going to be easy, though)

After all, the society we got brought up in, the culture, the beliefs that got passed onto us is merely just, a template, like the ones you see in Google Slides. It ain’t the final product, but it surely is something. Now it’s time for you to edit the slides and make the slideshow you want to show to others (okay I am done with the Google Slides analogy)

That’s all I have to say. You can go away now. Ah! maybe clap if you want, who cares (I really do though :P). If you agree or disagree with something, hit it up in the comments. Peace :)