Why the average student can identify the sound of the school bell faster than the square root of 16.

There’s one word everyone loves to throw around these days: “education.”
Politicians swear it’s their top priority, NGOs claim to “revolutionize” it, and influencers on TikTok suddenly become pedagogical prophets because twelve-year-olds like their videos.

Parents?
They mostly try to figure out three things:

1. When the next school trip is,
2. Why the school’s bomb shelter looks like a prehistoric cave, and
3. Who on earth decided that “social skills class” is the urgent need of a country where half the kids still can’t do long division.

And just like that, without noticing, education became a hybrid between a multi-level marketing scheme and a jungle survival course:
Someone’s selling us “future skills,” someone else is promoting “meaningful learning,” and above them all floats the growing suspicion that nobody remembers why they started doing any of this in the first place.

Because no, we’re not really educating anymore.
We’re operating a system – a system that knows the children far less than YouTube’s algorithm does.

Welcome to the System Whose First Goal Is… to Continue Existing

Once upon a time, education was simple:
Teach kids to write, read, think, understand the world, and maybe survive a geography lesson without falling asleep.

Today?
The first mission of the education system is to ensure the education system… survives.
Every reform looks like an attempt to justify a few new bureaucratic layers that someone will need to manage.

All this is wrapped in polished jargon like:
“Hybrid learning,” “emotional development,” “meta-cognitive strategies” – terms that mostly hide a simple truth:

Kids forget everything two days after the exam, and teachers are fighting for their sanity.

We Stopped Teaching Thinking – But Hey, Kids Can Make a PowerPoint!

The wildest part is: it’s not accidental.
Somewhere along the way we decided that teaching “collaboration,” “teamwork,” and “emotional reflection” is far more crucial than teaching a child how to construct a thought without collapsing into a spiral of confusion.

If a kid asks “why?” today, half the teachers freeze like they’ve been asked to solve the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle.

So what do students actually learn?

• How to make flashy PowerPoint slides they will never use again
• The full list of ancient kings nobody remembers
• The difference between “direct object” and “indirect object,” which will save absolutely no one in the real world
• And most importantly: how to sound intelligent without actually being intelligent.

In other words: education has become an advanced course in live-action telephone game.

Parents: “Just One Question” – Teachers: “We Just Live Here”

Parents today treat schools like customer-service centers:
You pay taxes, you expect a product.
What product?
That’s the part nobody can answer.

And then you have the late-night WhatsApp messages to teachers like:
“Hi Ruthie, why did Yoav get a 96 and not a 100? He’s very smart, sensitive, and unique.”

Naturally, this is the same parent who hasn’t managed to convince Yoav to read a book for more than 30 seconds without drifting into a TikTok-induced coma.

But the teachers aren’t the villains.
Most entered the profession with passion and purpose – until they found themselves debating with some committee over whether it’s permissible to read a story that includes the word “lazy.”

Kids Aren’t Stupid – They’re Just Overloaded

Here’s the truth nobody likes to admit:
Kids today aren’t less intelligent than previous generations – they’re just drowning in information.

They know everything and nothing at the same time.

They’ve learned the most important skill of all: how to survive the system.

• Say what the rubric expects.
• Don’t ask questions that cause trouble.
• Memorize, regurgitate, forget, repeat.

We’re not raising thinkers – we’re raising bureaucratic athletes.

So What Exactly Are They Selling Us Under the Name “Education”?

In one word: control.
Not knowledge.
Not curiosity.
Not creativity.
Control.

A system that prefers a quiet child over a curious one, a compliant child over a thinking one, and-above all-a child who does homework over a child who asks inconvenient questions.

Because independent thought is dangerous.
It leads to conclusions.
And conclusions might lead a child to realize something horrifying:

The system doesn’t work.

The Future? A Permanent “Education” in Quotation Marks

And what do we adults do?
We sigh, complain, say “the system is broken,” and continue sending our kids there every morning as if it’s a train station.

If change ever happens, it won’t be because of another reform or another colorful PowerPoint from the Ministry of Education.
It will start with the oldest, simplest skill of all:

Teaching kids to think.

Meaning:

• Asking questions
• Challenging answers
• Making mistakes
• Understanding the world isn’t built from worksheets
• Realizing that life isn’t measured in grades
• And that you can be a thoughtful human being without presenting it in a slide deck

So if we has one message to leave you with, it’s this:

If education doesn’t teach kids to think – only to memorize – then it isn’t education.
It’s pedagogical makeup with the flavor of “lite.”

And if we continue this way, the next generation will know everything about “project-based learning,”
but won’t be able to ask the most basic question:

Why?

At that point, it won’t be the education system’s problem anymore.
It’ll be ours.