“I don’t want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers.”
—John D. Rockefeller, founder of the General Education Board

Every school these days, from the smallest gradeschools all the way up to the most prestigious universities, are covered in posters and phrases touting extreme ambition and rebelliousness.

Example: the constant mantra spammed across the University of Washington campus while I was a student there from 2013-2017: “Be Boundless”

Now 7 years later, I’m writing this post as I’m living next to a university in Medellin Colombia, and the catchphrase they have promoted all across campus is “Sin Limites” (without limits). Basically the exact same thing.

As a now-former student who’s able to look at the educational field objectively as an outsider…it’s impossible to ignore that there’s some pretty rich irony at play here. 

Basically, EVERYTHING that’s taught from elementary school all the way up to high-level university classes, is designed to fall right in line with the status quo, i.e. stay WITHIN the bounds of societal norms and NOT push the limits.

During my Economics classes at UW for instance, our curriculum did not once discuss the mechanics of central banking, and if it did, I guarantee it was through the lens of:

“Of course central banks are good; they provide stability to the market!”

“Of course we need inflation; it incentivizes investment and ‘lubricates the economy!'”

And other ideas in that vein, which I now know are complete bullshit, thanks to reading The Bitcoin Standard, and subsequently diving DEEP into the Austrian Economics rabbit hole.

For more context on why Keynesian economics, the universally-taught economic model in all major schools, is BULLSHIT, go here.

Sticking with my UW economics class example, I now understand that the main ideas pushed by the curriculum (and ENFORCED through tests that PUNISH disagreement), are completely ass-backwards in reality…they’re nothing more than narratives pushed down from the top to keep the masses from realizing they’re being systemically stolen from, and rioting in the streets over the realization that THESE EXACT KEYNESIAN SYSTEMS they’re being trained to support are in fact the primary reason why it’s become so incredibly difficult for them to afford food, housing, and ironically their own indoctrination disguised as “education”.

The entire educational stack, from local primary schools all the way up to the most prestigious ivy-league universities, is no longer incentivized to encourage disruptive thinking, as these schools themselves are now a part of that government-run system which bleeds fiat keynesianism to its core!

#Education @ComicDaveSmith @joerogan pic.twitter.com/yXxGgAfZOY

— ₿en Wehrman 🦍⚡️🥩 (@benwehrman) April 29, 2023

Thanks to good ‘ol government takeover, it’s alllllll run by the state now. They pull every string and design every curriculum to keep students in an assembly line of following orders, complying to the “correct” (*wink wink*) answers on their tests, and being discouraged by bad grades or disciplinary measures anytime someone dares to *actually* embody these fluffy catchphrases they promote on their billboards and banners.

Another example from someone I know:

My friend Peruvian Bull, who I’ve spent the last several months traveling in South America with, explained his experience of challenging the educational status quo in a recent podcast he did with Daniel Prince.

👉 https://fountain.fm/episode/PIsU9AidXS7nf5zU2DlZ

“I started realizing that basically everything [my professors] were teaching me was incorrect, and they did not like the fact that I was challenging them and writing papers refuting what they were saying. I got lots of angry looks, blank stares, doors slammed in my face…I was shocked with how vociferous they were in opposing me. I wasn’t only wrong, I was morally incorrect, someone who hated the government and wanted to see old people lose their pensions. They gave me this emotional, anger-based line of reasoning versus what I thought was just pure rationality.”

– Peruvian Bull

In short, as a very sharp guy and naturally-obsessive researcher, he educated himself far beyond the level of his own Economics professors, and as a result, was given anything but praise for his “boundlessness”…instead he was scolded, given bad grades, and overall punished with a steeper path to climb in order to attain his degree than his classmates who kept their mouths shut and did what they were told.

All for the once-respected, but now insta-cancelworthy action of simply standing up, and challenging the norm.

Is it any wonder why all these post-graduate early-twenty-somethings, who legitimately feel like they are part of some “world-changing resistance”, are in reality just repeating the exact same thing as you’d hear on a random mainstream media news channel?

“Universities benefit from the fiat system’s easy money policies through government grants and tuition money (taking out debt favored in inflationary environments like the fiat system). The economists and papers academia produces are thus biased in support of inflationary fiat systems. It’s no wonder why so many academics vociferously oppose Bitcoin and advocate central planners having control over the global monetary system.”
—Hannah Wolfman-Jones

This is a huge problem. And it needs to change.

Which brings us to the most important question I want everyone to ask walking away from this post…

How Do We FIX Education?

Thankfully, there are exciting solutions being built all over the world, which are aiming to address the problems addressed above.

Some are taking a simpler approach of just going back to family-run homeschooling (which many don’t know, was THE primary method of education for the majority of human history).

Others are taking a more innovative approach, retaining the good aspects of modern schooling (mainly the social aspect), and combining it with traditional homeschooling, arriving at a blended format which could be summarized as “community homeschooling”.

Check out “A Place To Be”‘s website here. Super cool project run by bitcoiners!

Or, another interesting concept: Sticking mostly to the modern model of having a school and classroom full of kids, but instead of using a single teacher and centralized curriculum, allowing every student to study whatever field they want, and give each of them their own mentor to guide their individual paths. 

Conclusion:

There are TONS of cool concepts like those mentioned above, being built all over the world by parents who are passionate about giving their kids, and ALL kids, the best possible chance to thrive in this world.

I’m still very new at exploring all the possibilities myself, so I can’t speak much more on which ones I believe will prove to work best. Rather, I’m just excited to watch all of them gain adoption, so we as a global community can observe and individually contribute to this broader movement of disrupting fiat education through a grassroots, free market of ideas.

Education is one of the most important facets of every young person’s life. Without it, future generations will miss out on invaluable skills that will help them become productive members of society, and the opportunity to chase dreams that lead to beautiful outcomes for themselves, and the human race at large.

Modern schools are simply not cutting it when it comes to fostering an optimal learning environment that helps kids achieve these goals, and thus, we MUST prioritize solving this problem.

Whether it be by going back to the traditional homeschooling format which worked great for thousands of years before “schools” existed, or by coming up with an innovative blend of old and new, there’s never been a more important time to experiment with fresh concepts.

I for one, cannot wait to see what all the sharp moms, dads, and educational entrepreneurs out there come up with.

-Ben

For more resources on why modern education sucks and how we fix it, CLICK HERE.