Many thanks to Astolat for her assistance in figuring out what I meant to be saying with this rant. See, the original Rant of The Week for this time period was utter shite, because I just haven't felt motivated to rant. So I slapped up a piece of crap on the value of education, and Astolat called me at 7 in the morning, after a long, sleepless night at the St. Cross College Ball, and slapped me up. Apparently, she was considering sending a rant in reply, which I stlill hope she'll do, even though I was able to clarify what I meant by the existing rant, which is why I'm rewriting it.

Plainly, I'm very pro on education. I've found it to be just about the only satisfying field of endeavor where you can disguise the fact that you know nothing and how to do nothing. It's great. So my belief is that everyone should have as much as they want.

Clearly, the operative word there is want. I know some people think that if you're going to get a post-high school degree, you have to go immediately to college the fall after you graduate, and go straight on through until you wind up with your Ph.D in neurosurgery or whatever. I also know some people think that college is a waste of time, and that some of those people later change their minds. The point is, you should be able to treat your post high school education any way you are comfortable with; get it, don't get it, get it later, I don't care. Do what you want, you will anyway, as my mother always says.

But there is one aspect of education that you can only moderately control, and that's high school.

I think by now, we've pretty much all realized that, in order to have a nice-ish job in life, you cannot be a dropout. You must have a high school diploma, quite simply because the jobs that one used to be able to get without a diploma are, for the most part, long gone. Such jobs nowadays are being given to machines.

In fact, it is increasingly evident that a mere Bachelor's is rather like a high school level education was 20 years ago - not good enough for the top slots. However, that is not the point.

Until the US adopts a system like that favored in Britain, where you can choose to graduate at 16, enter the work force, and spend the rest of your life, until you keel over dead from a combination of lung cancer and cirrhosis of the liver, living for Friday and Saturday night, where you go out and blow your entire paycheck getting drunk, you pretty much have to stay in school until 18 if you want to have nice things like cars, guns, jobs, and girls. In other words, you're stuck there, since I've already pointed out the flaws with dropping out.

However, you do, of course, have an option in how much you decide to learn, and that's the part that I've got a problem with. If you're going to be somewhere - a job, work, whatever - you need to learn to make the situation work for you. If it doesn't, change it.

I fully realize that much of public education these days consists of teachers being expected to be prison wardens and nannies rather than educators, but in most places options exist for the student smart enough to find them. Do what you want to do, within the framework of what you have to do, is what I'm saying.

Because quite frankly, I at least am sick and tired of hearing merely endless moaning about the things that people are "forced" to do. What that translates to, in my opinion, is an unwillingness to take the responsibility to change the system. A number of the rants in the archive deal with personal responsibility - particularly the ones on Medication and Fight Club. The one on the government (Captive State? Just Do It!) is about what I think happens when you refuse to take responsibility.

You wind up as a sheep. And sheep get slaughtered.

If you're going to be there, be there on your terms. And your terms don't include sitting around saying how godawful it is that you have to read actual books, printed on actual paper and then write an actual essay for class. That's not terms; that's whining.

Whining is what you do when you aren't willing to change something. Change is what you do when you're willing to be responsible for your own actions, rather than merely tossed around by others.

Consequently, take responsibility. How difficult of a concept is this? Maybe it's scary, but no one that I've ever met who's doing what they want got there by just letting things happen. On the other hand, the ones who aren't happy didn't take responsibility.

I mean, whose education is being defeated here? Yours. Do you want to work at Wal-Mart for the rest of your life?

It's all up to you. As Donald Trump said - before losing his fortune - "As long as you're going to think anyway, think big." Thinking small is the mark of a true conformist, and we all feel better when being called rebels, don't we?

I'm willing to bet that 95% of the people who see this said at some point that they want to bring down the system and create, quote, something new, unquote.

However, the Man isn't going to listen to you as long as you don't force him eo. Defeat your education - which is just about the only thing the government is prepared to give you, and you don't defeat it. Instead, you've removed yourself from being something that the state has to consider. You make their job easier. And you won't be bringing down society anytime soon, if all you want to do is make its job easier.

My extremely poor analogy for this would have to be if you're going to the beach, you get out of the car. You don't just sit in the car until you drive away. You are required to attend school; you don't have to learn anything. However, if you think that school as it is is a waste of your life, try making it something that works for you.

Biased beyond belief,

Channon