We learn what we live

Since around the 1950s, and perhaps continuing to this day, brave individuals have sought innovative approaches to education—Montessori, Waldorf education, Feldenkrais, and even homeschooling. These methods are often seen as a more compassionate and individualized approach, one that respects families, faith, personal development, liberty and freedom.

However, people forgot that they’ve spent staggering 12,000+ hours at school—maybe even as much as 20,000 hours considering homework and what is called “higher education.” In any case, this is certainly more than the supposedly 10,000 hours required to achieve mastery in any area of choice.

We, the people, were schooled in a system that uses curricula and rigid, prepackaged lessons, a system based on collective thinking, certificates, and bureaucratic compliance. We were conditioned to accept the authority of strangers, guidelines, professional profiles, and hierarchies; to believe in the necessity of insurance policies, contracts, and trademarks; and to fear the looming specter of intellectual property battles, cease-and-desist orders, and legal entanglements. Most of it wasn’t for learning to read and write well, or to become good at math, research and reasoning skills—it was about training obedience to a system that measures human worth in credentials and control.

And so, even the brave, they’ve learned what they’ve lived. And they live what they’ve learned. Eventually they pressed Feldenkrais, Montessori—and certainly large parts of homeschooling—into the same system they knew so well.

School. Taking children to school.

Where I live, every morning there’s a traffic jam. Not just from people going to work, but also from people taking their children to school, with private transportation. Completely clogging up all the streets around the many school’s entrance driveways.

And in the afternoon there’s another traffic jam, when children are picked up again, and are put into their extra curriculum classes until dinner time, when they are being watched at home again. Billions of children living under 24/7 surveillance, with not a minute being unaccounted for. I wonder, do these families have surveillance cameras even in their bedrooms?

This is what I was thinking about this morning, when I heard about the Stargate project for the US, and billionaire Larry Ellison’s dystopian vision for society where everything is monitored by AI. I quote, “to keep citizens on their best behavior. Citizens will be on their best behavior because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on and we’re using AI to monitor the video.”

On the upside, most people seem to be fine with all this—since it’s the world they grew up to know. They’ve learned what they’ve lived, and they live what they’ve learned.

ChatGPT says that I should tighten up this blog post, smoothen transitions, and highlight the central argument while leaving space for reflection. It says that some phrases, like “billions of children living under 24/7 surveillance” or “do these families have surveillance cameras even in their bedrooms?”, could come across as sarcastic. Softening the tone, ChatGPT says, might ensure my message is received as serious rather than rhetorical.

All solid points. But not today ChatGPT, not today.