An essay by John Melonakos
Schools and Education
I ran across an excellent article yesterday entitled, “Why Schools Don’t Educate,” written in 1990. A major topic of this blog is how to learn what is needed to thrive in a startup. Increasingly, schools are poor preparation for the life of an entrepreneur.
Here are the parts of the essay that stand out:
- Schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders.
- It’s not the fault of bad teachers or too little money spent, it’s just impossible for education and schooling ever to be the same thing.
- Schools are intended to produce through the application of formulae, formulaic human beings whose behavior can be predicted and controlled.
- But our society is disintegrating, and in such a society, the only successful people are self-reliant, confident, and individualistic.
In order to become an entrepreneur, it is important to break out of the mold. A good approach is to take all the good things schooling brings to the table and shed the formulaic cookie cutter nonsense that impedes innovation.
What are your thoughts on how schooling affects the entrepreneurship gene?