What is the Value of School?

The other night I went out and socialized. A rare occurrence!

I was sat opposite a lady who researches DEI, Diversity and is a PhD and works in education.

Now, for those who have come to know my character - this kind of person is effectively the human equivalent of the inverse of me. Ying and Yang.

Well - I’m always civilized and would never get into an argument.

It’s funny - those with titles and work in the academic world do deeply wear this fact on their sleeve. Quite the introduction!

I’m a heavy self educator - I love learning. However most of my knowledge has come from post formal education. It’s me sitting down with paper and pen or a book and reading/studying. It’s fun and relaxing. I think a lot about a lot of things - because its interesting.

She quickly got uncomfortable with the conversation as it poked beyond her shibbolethetic-institutional knowledge. Yea - I made that word up! Yea - it’s a hybridized word. Take that academics!

I avoided the DEI conversation as that would get heated. The topic that I was circling around - because I find it interesting was directly around AI and School and subsequently - what is the Value of a Human going forward?

The Value of Knowledge

The conversation started off with her telling me that AI is discouraged in schools because it masks the students knowledge. Which I rebuffed with the statement that knowledge has no value anymore (generally speaking).

After using Duo Lingo for the last 2-3 years I can safely say - learning from an AI instructor is the best way to learn language. It will show you exactly what you need when you need to learn the most. I’ve learned more in 2-3 years in Spanish than during my entire time at school for French and Spanish combined.

Are they using it in school - nope.

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If you are new to my writing - I do paint with broad strokes and generalize - getting stuck in the semantics and edge cases is unproductive. I tend to speak in Black and White as it conveys the end outcome clearer.

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Back in the day experts were paid to store knowledge and prescribe knowledge based off of some situation. So;

for an engineer - how thick of beams do we need to cross this roof space?

for a doctor - what is this symptom typically resultant from?

Stored knowledge, unpacked conditionally in some context.

Now - as of 2025 - all human knowledge is packed into a GPT.

Do I need to know how to transform English into French? No - it can do that for me. Do I need to know some element on the periodic table - No it can tell me.
Do I need to be able to learn lots of software languages - No it can do that for me.

Now technically as of 2025 - GPTs hallucinate, so you do need to hold knowledge to spot the crazy responses, but every year it diminishes.

I use AI all day every day - More than 8 hours a day during the week. Its ability to reason and produce without my involvement gets noticeably more every year. At some point, perhaps - no need for us to fact-check or sanity check its result.

Where Is Value For Humans?

The value placed on knowledge is now empty (or on that trajectory).

SO -

If knowledge is no value; humans cannot be valued based off their knowledge - what is their value?

You might expect that an institution set up to guide a human for ~18 years of their life might have a destination or big picture in mind for what they are trying to produce.

What are they trying to achieve if knowledge is worthless?

If they go another decade or two with that child shoving knowledge into that child - that means a waste of 1-2 decades of that child’s life given that knowledge has no value any more.

Clearly - take this statement with a pinch of salt - obviously knowledge has some value - but 18 years of cramming knowledge - is this merited? Is all knowledge worth knowing?

Absolutely not.

An Indoctrination Daycare

Truthfully - I’m not convinced that the education system exists for the benefit of the individual.

I see it as a daycare that conditions participants to be obedient, unquestioning while being sprinkled with the virtues of Democracy and multiculturalism (and whatever else controlling narrative).

The daycare facilitates parents to go out, use their lifeforce to produce value. That life force transformed into value gets forcefully extracted upwards via a monopoly on violence - through the government and controlled by the ruling elites.

I lived a sheltered life up until Covid. A normie.

Until the world seemed to have gone crazy. I couldn’t rationalize or understand anything. The whole event made me take a few steps back and re-asses my knowledge of the world. Since then I started reading a lot. The world makes a lot more sense now I see it from a different angle.

When you view the world from the correct angle things that would not normally make sense, make sense. It comes down looking at the world through the right context of motivation.

Ignorance is bliss - until you chose not to be ignorant. With that comes a burden.

An Alternative

Honestly - I’m of the opinion that deeply understanding Arithmetic (Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication and Division). Understanding - say the 10 commandments. Understanding logic, fallacies, deeply understanding reading and writing and how to convey thought through argument.

That’s roughly - enough for a base layer.

I think that’s honestly enough from a schooling or foundational period. And truthfully this could be completed by the age of 10 years old.

I asked her - if they are trying to set kids up for success - why am I using AI 8 hours a day and the children are not using it at all? The education system isn’t connecting with reality. Reality doesn’t use the same approach as those being prescribed by school.

Personally - with what I know now and with the right resources I would pull the kids out of the education system and home school them, whilst traveling the world.

This would negate unvetted anonymous humans nurturing your child with a menu of topics that are the opposite of what you believe in.

Life is special. Time is the most precious of things.

Burning a quarter of their lives doing pointless activity is saddening.

I would execute action - however my wife is an educator - so you can imagine the conversations we have at home. She always resort to a raised voice and logic-free words. The power of indoctrination and conformity is strong.

My ideal would be to travel constantly round the world - via cruise, via train etc... Teach Math, Philosophy, Logic, Economics, Philosophy and Psychology to the children. I’d have them running their own business in some area of their lives that they enjoy instead of 8 hours in a box. Selling stickers. Printing their own cool shirts. Also getting them to help in a community and charity actively.

The goal would be to build a solid bedrock of logic and reasoning within the first 10 years. Then the remaining 8 years to spend time building their character, their endurance, strength and confidence with the world.

How School can provide Value

So - Generally speaking - if humans have no value from knowledge.

Their remaining value exists as creativity, producing by physical means and entrepreneurial undertakings. However those are both on very shaky grounds as AI continues to advance.

Entrepreneurial abilities are always in demand.

Will school change? No.

Is school of value? No