3 Destructive Things School Taught You Without You Even Realizing It

Mark Manson wrote a fabulous post that led me down a rabbit hole of thinking of all the actually destructive things schools teach us without our noticing. And then, because we spend so much time there, we carry these ideas with us for a long time... unless we actively work on dismantling them.

Here are pieces of his blogpost I want you to read:

More Excerpts from Mark...

1. You learned that success comes from the approval of others.

We seem to live in a culture today where people are more concerned with  appearing  to be something important rather than actually  being  something important. (Mark's examples: the Kardashians, Donald Trump, 63% of all Instagram users, athletes who make rap albums, the entire US Congress, etc.)

There are a number of reasons for this, but a large part of it is that as we grow up, we are rewarded and punished based on meeting the approval of other people’s standards, not our own.
Make good grades. Take advanced courses. Play on the sports teams. Score high on standardized tests.
These metrics make for a productive workforce but not a happy workforce.

The why’s of life are far more important than the what’s of life and that’s a message that is rarely communicated growing up.

“Our system is performance-based and not purpose-based. It teaches mimicry and not passion.”

Growing up, everything you’re told to do is for no other purpose than to earn the approval of others around you. It’s to satisfy somebody else’s standard. How many times growing up did you ever hear the complaint,
“This is pointless. Why do I have to learn this?”

How many times do I hear adults saying, “I don’t even know what I like to do, all I know is I’m not happy.”

Our system is performance-based and not purpose-based. It teaches mimicry and not passion.

Performance-based learning isn’t even efficient. A kid who is excited about cars is going to a much better time learning about math and physics if math and physics can be put into the context of what he cares about. He’s going to retain more of it and become curious to discover more on his own.

“And that’s an ugly habit to engrain into a culture. 
It churns out a mass of highly-efficient, low self-esteem people.”

But if he isn’t responsible for the  why  of what he is learning, then what he’s learning isn’t physics and math, it’s how to fake it to make someone else happy. And that’s an ugly habit to engrain into a culture. It churns out a mass of highly-efficient, low self-esteem people.

In the past few decades, concerned parents and teachers have tried to remedy this “self-esteem” issue by making it easier for kids to feel successful. But this just makes the problem worse. Not only are you training kids to base their self-worth on the approval of others, but now you’re giving them that approval without them having to actually do anything to earn it!

Or as Branford Marsalis, one of the greatest saxophone players of all-time, so eloquently put it:

The emphasis on success as external performance is a vestige of the industrial age — it molded kids into pliant worker bees, not happy individuals. It doesn’t make sense anymore.

External performance markers are fine, and likely even necessary, but they’re not sufficient anymore. There has to be a new starting point. There has to be personal purpose introduced into education at some point. There needs to be a  why  to learning to go with the  what. The problem is that everybody’s  why  is personal and it’s impossible to scale. Especially when teachers are so over-worked and underpaid.

2. You learned that failure is a source of shame.

Earlier this year I had lunch with one of those people that you just can’t believe exists. He had four degrees, including a masters from MIT and a PhD from Harvard (or was it a masters from Harvard and a PhD from MIT? I can’t even remember). He was at the top of his field, worked for one of the most prestigious consulting firms and had traveled all over the world working with top CEOs and managers.

And then he told me he felt stuck. He wanted to start a business but he didn’t know how.

And he wasn’t stuck because he didn’t know  what  to do. He knew exactly what he wanted to do. He was stuck because he didn’t know if it was the  right  thing to do.

He told me that throughout his entire life he had mastered the art of getting it right on the first try. That’s how schools reward you. That’s how companies reward you. They tell you what to do and then you nail it. And he could always nail it.

“But when it came to creating something new, doing something innovative, stepping out into the unknown, he didn’t know how to do it. He was afraid.”

But when it came to creating something new, doing something innovative, stepping out into the unknown, he didn’t know how to do it. He was afraid. Innovation requires failure, and he didn’t know how to do failure. He had never failed before!

In his  new book , Malcolm Gladwell wrote a chapter about how a disproportionate number of insanely successful people are dyslexic and/or high school drop outs. Gladwell suggested a simple explanation: these were talented people who, for whatever reason, were forced to become accustomed to failure early on in their lives. This comfort with failure allowed them to take more calculated risks and see opportunities where others weren’t looking later on.

“Failure helps us. It’s how we learn. Failed job applications teach us how to be better applicants.”

Failure helps us. It’s how we learn. Failed job applications teach us how to be better applicants. Failed relationships teach us how to be better partners. Launching products or services that bomb teach us how to make better products and services. Failure is the path to growth. Yet we get it hammered into our brains over and over that failure is always unacceptable. That  being wrong  is shameful. That you get one shot and if you screw it up, it’s over, you get a bad grade and that’s it.

But that’s not how life works at all.