9 REASONS WHY CURRENT EDUCATION SUCKS.

8 min readNov 13, 2020

The current education system has not been properly changed in ages.

When our grandparents were still young and studying, the system was for about 80% the same. In all this time humanity has developed so many new inventions. Nobody has really looked back on how education could be optimized, maybe some have, but were not successful in doing so.

We are not talking about the details but the basic structure of how traditional education works. We still work with

Is this the right way of educating? This was the question I asked myself and found answers.

Do we even need a new education system? Is it really this necessary? Can’t we just tweak current education, and … These are questions you could ask yourself considering this subject.

The answer to these questions is pretty simple: YES we need a new education system. WHY: Because current education sucks! At this point, you are probably asking yourself why I am claiming this. No problem, I will give you 9 reasons.

1: OLD

Big scale traditional education has taken shape somewhere around the late 19th century.

Like we all know today the social structures at the time were completely different. There were huge differences in gender equality, way of life, religion and … This is when the foundations for current education have been put together. The basics were the same as they are today which is almost unimaginable compared to progress in other social /industrial/technological industries.

Airplanes didn’t exist at the time, electricity for public use was first developed and cars were in the early stages of industrialization. These examples have since seen enormous evolution in all aspects.

Education did not. We could actually say this should have been prioritized above all previously mentioned examples. Our education is a knowledge base on which we all depend when it comes to the financial and social aspects of our life.

Can you imagine how the world would change if everyone could have way higher quality education today? A system that would be up to date with a focus on personal empowerment, efficiency in knowledge acquisition and social/ethical development of the individual.

2: INEFFICIËNT

The current system is highly inefficiënt in reaching its goal. The system wants to prepare individuals to be ready for the workspace and function in society. This, as we all know, is not the case. Most of us don’t do what we went to university for and most of us don’t know how to be successful in society. The ones who do have learned doing so outside of the education system. Why does the system have such bad results?

Because it is based on limiting possibilities. We work with grades, curriculums, tests/exams and auditoriums/classrooms.

Every person is different, this is something that does not need a lot of explanation. So actually every person should have a personalized approach to knowledge acquisition for it to work efficiently. Everyone wants and should learn what is important to them. A curriculum can not give this possibility. Every person learns at his or her own pace, some really quick and others rather slow. Age-based grades restrict this possibility. Everyone has his own way of acquiring knowledge. Classrooms and auditoriums can not adapt to this. And lastly, every person has his own way of remembering, tests and exams are therefore also restricting in a lot of ways.

3: IMPERSONAL

From the previous point I made you could conclude that the system is impersonal. There is such a high diversity of people, nobody is the same. Every person has his own thoughts, likes different people, does different things, and so on. Pretty much every aspect of human diversity is not taken into account in the current system. We try to force this diversity through some kind of filter called school directions. The problem with this is that you just can develop enough to suit everybody’s needs and wishes.

4: AUTHORITARIAN

Because we are trying to force a high diversity concept through a very low diversity system, you will find natural resistance.

It’s like you would try to force a truckload of water through a normal sink tap. This would take very long and would be inefficient unless you put a high amount of pressure on the water tank (which still would not be that great).

This is exactly what we are doing to young people these days. We put pressure them in an authoritarian way to get them to do what we want them to do. The parents do it and the teachers as well. Instead of changing the system, we are pressuring young people to adapt to it.

Everyone with the right mind would say it should be the other way around. Sometimes a young person pressures him or herself and does not need this outside pressure. This in essence actually means the same which results in my next conclusion.

5:PSYCHOLOGICALLY DEMANDING

I think we all know how pressure feels, not particularly pleasant, isn’t it? Now apply this to a long period of time. Pretty damaging to who you are, first psychologically and afterward physically.

Our current system gives people stress which is proved to be unhealthy. Further, because we push people through this system, we have to flatten out who they are because we have to make them fit it.

This all sounds really negative. You could say I’m exaggerating, nobody feels this way, and … This is when we come to our next point.

6: DISHONEST

This is a pretty important point as this will explain a lot of my previous statements.

We are dishonest to ourselves and to the young people we bear responsibility for. We keep on telling ourselves there is no other way, if you don’t go to school/university you won’t have a job and won’t be respected.

In some way this is correct because enough people think this way resulting in this lie feeding itself.

The fact that you HAVE to get a diploma in this traditional system is based on fear for the future, you want certainty, this is why you are telling this to yourself and your kids (if you have them).

Once you can make young people believe they have to do it for themselves, you take away exterior pressure for achievement in the education system. They will now motivate themselves which partially takes away the negative psychological effects of this system.

Keep in mind something very valuable is taken away at this point. The freedom of being and expressing themselves in their true essence. And all of this based on a lie we tell ourselves, each other and our young generation.

Look at how employers hire these days. You will see it’s mostly based on other aspects. They want someone to get the job DONE not someone who only has a diploma which should mean they can get the job done (and maybe even have to pay more).

Companies like Google and Facebook these days are hiring their developers on skill. If you look at what a lot of successful entrepreneurs say about this, they almost all say they don’t care about it all too much. They look at skills, motivation, attitude, team and vision integration.

This is a trend that is growing which means the value of diplomas is diluting in the workspace.

So is it worth spending all this time in this system considering the negative effects of it compared to the positive effects? I know for sure you wouldn’t bet your money on it.

7: HAS A NEGATIVE IMPACT LATER IN LIFE

When you understand the human brain a little bit, it becomes clear why I make this statement. We tend to associate experiences with concepts all the time. When you apply this understanding to how education relates to knowledge, you will see that the personal relationship towards learning decreases. As you are forcing young people to learn things that do not suit who they are, resistance towards knowledge acquisition rises. To put it simply, because school is in a lot of ways a neutral to a negative experience. And the association between school and knowledge is really high. The brain will connect these two concepts together. This then means that you will automatically be demotivated to learn because a negative to neutral experience (school) is associated with the learning concept.

This is exactly why this is a problem later in life. When learning is seen as negative or at least not positive. The chances of someone learning while this authority falls away are slimmer.

Albert Einstein once said, ‘once you stop learning you start dying’.

By this he probably means. Once you stop learning, personal evolution comes to a halt, which means that an important (or the) goal of(in) life is no longer executed. This results in you degenerating your own meaning in life.

If I correctly interpreted the quote is indeed questionable, but it should be somewhere near his thought process.

8: NON FLEXIBLE

The current education system in itself is nonflexible like we discussed previously, but keep in mind it is under government control as well. Within democratic governments, it has become really hard to push big changes quickly. It is based on a bureaucratic system that is fixed in itself considering all the protocols and rules it has to follow. Further, as it is democratic, we have seen that politicians like to contradict each other for the sake of doing so. From this, we can conclude that proper change is not coming anytime soon. And if the right initiative would take place, it would still take a lot of time to see decent results.

9: NON EMPOWERING (conclusion)

To conclude what I have been saying in these past sections. The current education system is way too limited as opposed to human diversity, which is why it has to be authoritarian. This results in a lack of efficiency, negative psychological effects, and a limiting attitude later in life. Further, it is based on a deprecated way of thinking which we are still repeating to ourselves and others. And change is most likely not coming anytime soon. It’s pretty bad, isn’t it? When you look at it objectively, you will understand for yourself that the traditional education system is not empowering, in contrast actually. This is a major current problem!

I believe the educational system should empower individuals to eventually empower the world!