Sin Escolaridad Más

I went to the library today and checked out two books in spanish, those being La Casa en Mango Street and Che Guevara Habla a la Juventud. Ever since late August of '09, I've been learning the spanish language. I used Rosetta Stone for 5 months, and since January I've been reading spanish books with a spanish dictionary nearby. I can read most simple things and understand it spoken to me, but speaking it is another story. Hence why I'm going to Costa Rica for 3 months on May 19th, and the rest is history.

Anyway, La Casa en Mango Street is a book that I was assigned when I was in Spanish III in high school. I remember the very day I was assigned the book, and how I stared blankly at its pages with not an ounce of hope in my soul that I'd get through it. I defeated myself, in a way, for I didn't read the book (nor pass the class). I didn't give a damn, frankly.

But now, in a span of 8 months, I can read this book! I flip through the pages with almost ease, sounding out the beautiful letters aloud as if I were painting a Rembrandt. I'm absolutely amazed at the results that I (or anybody) can achieve when I actually want to do something. Foreign tongues used to scare the bajezzas out of me, but I'm very much looking forward to learning both french and german come next August. It has little to do with IQ and everything to do with the will to learn.

What does this have to do with political economy or economics?

Compulsory schooling is a sham. I graduated believing that the professors were supposed to teach me something, that more schooling and more training and more formal education were my vectors to success. This is so incredibly and emphatically untrue that I pity all those graduating seniors going on to Harvard and Yale and the like. You know, the kind of people that look at a recession and say, "Hope I'm not out of the job..." Because now, I can look at a recession and say, "I don't feel like participating in this. I can always create my own job, anyway." Compulsory schooling, by its very definition, cannot teach you this skill because you aren't allowed to choose among the skills and talents you're best at and further develop.

From my 18+ year experience in school, and my substitute teaching experience, and my sister's experiences, and all the tutoring I've done during college, I've realized that compulsory schooling sucks the drive and the need to learn, to better oneself, out of most people. These students are so damn reliant on the professor to hand them knowledge that they don't even realize they were born with their own faculties. Compulsory schooling is worse than inefficient and futile;

it's immoral.