You went to a school that actually taught you how to think? Consider yourself privileged, my friend.
The Prussian system of education, which is at the root of contemporary compulsory schooling, was designed to produce machine operators and obedient soldiers, not necessarily to educate anyone - the idealism of individual teachers notwithstanding.
This is standard operating procedure, and definitely my own personal experience during middle and high school. Do this over a couple of generations and you get a population largely incapable of basic reflection.
And since this form of "education" is, in fact, nonsensical, parents end up paying for tutoring so their kids can pass an equally nonsensical mandatory exam, so that they (supposedly) get better prospects. So teachers get a lucrative side gig giving private lessons to keep the system going, and as they get complacent, they become complicit.
Maybe in your community things are laid out different. Either way, larger populations still end up having a "critical mass" of eloquent people maintaining the tradition of the written word, and the benefits it provides to society; smaller ones just get dispossessed at scale. This contributes to consolidation of power, the establishment of global oligopolies that hold back progress for the sake of their bottom line, etc.
The Prussian system of education, which is at the root of contemporary compulsory schooling, was designed to produce machine operators and obedient soldiers, not necessarily to educate anyone - the idealism of individual teachers notwithstanding.
This is standard operating procedure, and definitely my own personal experience during middle and high school. Do this over a couple of generations and you get a population largely incapable of basic reflection.
And since this form of "education" is, in fact, nonsensical, parents end up paying for tutoring so their kids can pass an equally nonsensical mandatory exam, so that they (supposedly) get better prospects. So teachers get a lucrative side gig giving private lessons to keep the system going, and as they get complacent, they become complicit.
Maybe in your community things are laid out different. Either way, larger populations still end up having a "critical mass" of eloquent people maintaining the tradition of the written word, and the benefits it provides to society; smaller ones just get dispossessed at scale. This contributes to consolidation of power, the establishment of global oligopolies that hold back progress for the sake of their bottom line, etc.