In response to Matt’s call for readers to put forth a first step toward world peace, a reader suggests that the educational system must center on identifying people’s similarities rather than exploiting their differences.

Matt responds:

 

I honor and laud organized education.  In my past career I was a longtime board member of a university.  I was a member of the advisory board of a county school district that had about 20,000 teachers.  I worked in a number of educational systems to try to look at the economics and the government, both as a help and an interference, through institutions like the Boy Scouts, the churches, and hospitals.

In many cases it was like bringing the goat into the cabbage patch, because in my educational process, I never did well in a formal education setting.  When I was in school, I really didn’t “get it” in the class.  I always went out and sought help from people who really knew what they were doing, so they could sit down and talk to me about the subjects.  I tend to learn through my ears, through the mentoring process.  I synthesize that and build bridges in my head, to bridge the gap where my lack of knowledge is.

But today I really feel that education is important, and that every individual has to realize that their education probably is as much an obligation to themselves as it is to the school, the teacher, and the family.  It’s like going to a smorgasbord.  Here’s all these great things; you take what you like and leave what you don’t.  But then you have to look at yourself and ask, “Why am I such a skinny runt?” or “Why am I a fat pig?” or “Why am I not enjoying what I’m doing or really enjoying what I’m doing?”  Self-responsibility is something you don’t hear a heck of a lot about.  The old saying, “I never asked to be born,” is a cop-out.

At some point you have to take responsibility, even though it’s difficult to say, “I’ve got lung cancer because I smoked all the time,” or “This is happening to me because of what I did, not what somebody else did.”  In our gene structure, it’s probably about, “Look what you did to me.”  When I was drinking, it was never my fault; there was always something else.  Luckily I edeucated myself and got out of it.  Many of my friends didn’t, and now they’re in their graves.

So education is a very complex process that’s different for each of us as individuals.  We tend to look at it very simply:  “If I go to this school, this will happen.”  I don’t think that’s the case.  I think education is the motivation for people to take their own lives, their happiness, their ability to get and keep a job, into their own hands—and then, if it doesn’t work out, to take ownership of that and figure out why it didn’t work, and then try not to make the same mistake next time.  That’s pretty hard to do.  Maybe it’s asking too much.  But let’s put it into the pile of problems that we always say are insolvable, and let’s do what we can so that that they can be solved, one person at a time, one mistake at a time, one victory at a time—and all of a sudden, we’re all marching down the street singing “Kumbaya” and having a hell of a time!