A World of Unhappy Workers
Education itself is a putting off, a postponement; we are told to work hard to get good results. Why? So we can get a good job.
What is a good job? One that pays well.
Oh. And that’s it?
All this suffering, merely so that we can earn a lot of money, which, even if we manage it, will not solve our problems anyway?
It’s a tragically limited idea of what life is all about.”
– Tom Hodgkinson
Read this if you agree with the following statement: school taught me how to become an employee, not how to become successful.
While requiring young people to go to school certainly gets them started on the long road of being a fully-functioning and independent adult, the skills I grew up learning in school are not what have provided me with economic value.
Sure, I learned to listen and read and collaborate and memorize textbooks—but I did not learn crucial life skills like what to do with money, how to invest, how to understand taxes, what poor mental health looks like, or the vast world of sexuality—none of these topics that would have had a drastic impact on my life.
And let me be clear here: this is not at the fault of our teachers.
No. The people who stood in front of the chalkboard and shared knowledge with us are not the reason why most adults alive today are in debt. The reason is that the school system was designed to instil discipline, not foster inspiration to learn.
Education isn’t really about learning! More specifically, it isn’t about learning how to learn. It’s about learning how to conform.
Predictability is the ultimate goal.
William Treseder, One Man Created the Education System Holding You Back
And if it’s difficult for you to take one writer’s opinion about it, let’s go back and revisit the man who invented the school system that we still use today.
Horace Mann was an American educational reformer, slavery abolitionist, and Whig politician known for his commitment to promoting public education. He spearheaded the Common School Movement, ensuring that every child could receive a basic education funded by local taxes. His influence quickly spread beyond Massachusetts as more states took up the idea of universal schooling.
A school system developed in 1837 still frameworks the way we are educated today.
Sure, the curriculums and technologies have obviously changed—but the general principles that groom us have not:
- get an education
- pay for another education
- get a job
- spend most of your life at that job
- give a sizeable chunk of that income away in taxes (in Canada, it’s almost half)
- retire with a pension that won’t cover the last years of your life, therefore…get another job
- work until you physically can’t
- die
Depressing? Yeah…
Why would the higher-ups of education want this though? Why would someone want a nation of uninspired, in-debt workers?
Because it’s profitable.
It’s been that way since Rockefeller and Carnegie pulled American farmers into their factories in the early 1900s.
In 1902, the General Education Board was a non-governmental organization designed to support higher education and was funded primarily by John D Rockefeller. Throughout his lifetime he donated approximately $180 million.
The GEB provided major funding for schools across the nation and was very influential in shaping the current school system. Why was so much funding put into schooling? What what his motivation?
As Rockefeller put it, “I don’t want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers.”
Even more compelling are the words of Frederick T Gates, business advisor to Rockefeller:
“We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or of science. We are not to raise up among them authors, orators, poets, or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians….”
This system has bred a society of non-thinkers. People shift from one stage of life to the next thinking “This is what we do” while being too caught up in it to step out of the line and ask, “Why?”
One of Horace Mann’s most famous quotes is as follows: Education then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men, the balance-wheel of the social machinery.
Equalizer: to make the same.
People complain about the same things for decades of their life:
- Being stuck in the rat race
- Having no time
- Working for retirement
- Being tired
- Being out of shape
while failing to realize that these most common problems all have one crucial thing in common:
They are problems that you are choosing not to solve.
Yeah—you know. This is starting to sound like white noise because you’ve heard it before. So why are we this complacent? Because it’s easier.
It’s easier to stay in the rat race. It’s easier to just keep doing what we’re doing and complain about it than it is to take a big risk and change. Most importantly, it’s easier because it’s what we’ve been taught.
Most importantly, it’s easier because it’s what we’ve been taught.
How did we become non-thinkers?
Well, when you work a minimum 40-hour week, throw in some extra hours for commuting to/from the office, add the 21 hours per week that the average adult spends watching television, and then throw Google into the mix (taking away our need to really ever retain information at all)—what could you expect?
Dreaming, strategizing, organizing, and working take time and effort. And when you already feel like you’re mentally maxed out, effort is not something you have a lot of to just give out.
Summarily, we are creating a world of dummies.
Angry dummies, who feel they have the right, the authority, and the need not only to comment on everything, but to make sure their voice (however inane) is heard above the rest — and to drag down any opposing views through personal attacks, loud repetition, and confrontation.
Ken McElroy, A Nation of Workers: How Public Education is Dummying Down Our Labor Force
Let’s explore who comes to mind when you think of the word “successful.” Here are the ones that came to my mind:
| Steve Jobs | Warren Buffett | Oprah Winfrey |
| Henry Ford | Rihanna | Bill Gates |
| Joe Rogan | Russell Brunson | Jeff Bezos |
| J.K. Rowling | Elon Musk | Mark Zuckerberg |
| Jamie Kern Lima | Coco Chanel | Walt Disney |
What do all of these people have in common? Entrepreneurs. They did something different. They stepped out of the norm, and they didn’t give up.
This is why entrepreneurship and innovation exists: because some people out there recognize that there must be something better.
This is why we want to spend our time working with people who are changing lives instead of just moseying along. This is what Inspired Idiots is about.
People who want more. I want more out of life.
We have to be this change.
We have two primary choices in life. We can either accept conditions as they exist, or we can take the responsibility to change them.
Denis Waitley
If you’re interested in making money online, but have no idea how — you are an inspired idiot!
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