*TL;DR at the end of this article for those wanting something quicker than an essay

The education system in the US has a problem. No, this is not about critical theory, teachers unions, or wasteful spending and administration's. This is a conversation about how the American approach to education has progressively led to a decline in the maturity of the society.

To begin, let us discuss what the purpose of education is for. As the saying goes "you go to college, you do well, you get a job". This leads many persons to consider that school is essential to train people to work to be effective at whatever job that may get, directly or tertiarily related to the education that they had undergone. It is intuitive and straightforward.

This is not what education actually does. For many, they use school and college in particular for this purpose, but it is not particularly effective. After all, once enough people go to college you're not any more relevant for a career than any other graduate, barring some exceptions that require specialized education.

You see, what our education system has done is devalue itself through it's own prolification. College being used as a tool to get a job is only relevant when you pursue a career within a specialized field. Rather, things are now backwards and the market has gone from consumer to supplier sided. Instead of students standing out in a shining light for employers, employers now see college as a minimum expectation of what new employees should have accomplished. It is no better than a high school diploma was just one or two generations ago.

But do employers need college educated employees? In reality, no. Most employees require an amount of training regardless of their education background and following the 80/20 rule, the majority of the value of the education is prestige, and most of the work can easily be done by someone without the additional education and, at most, those without may simply need a bit more time to adapt or learn the work.

This is because education was not designed for the layperson, the average citizen. Education was designed for the leaders of tomorrow, and the representatives who could best understand the value of a diverse spectrum of knowledge and put that knowledge to work for their communities. Be it in a leadership role within a firm, civic duty, or creating the ideas of tomorrow and developing practices to implement those ideas into the society, these are the traditional pre-emptive benefits of a classical liberal arts education.

Considering that line of thinking, why is it that entry level positions throughout this country require a college education? I restate, college has been undervalued through its proliferation. Entry level work has become overvalued by the number of college educated job seekers. And what is the result of this established system? Citizens are staying in school longer, debt is growing faster than wages, maturity through life experience is delayed longer and longer.

As citizens are expected to continue their education, education that does not require the backbone and heavy structure of earned wages, the youth grow longer into their youth, maturing later, and the virtues of the people are lost through the prolification of ideals and the average citizen spending more time in a sub-society that does not respect or demand virtues. Even the honor codes of our education system are designed around things like hard work and not cheating, in many ways schools become a haven of practiced cheating and tactical action to avoid as many difficulties and stressors as possible, or the reliance on drugs for those who do not cheat in order to complete their work in as rushed of a manner as possible (or possibly a reliance on drugs to recover from actually working hard, for the rare individuals who put in regular effort). This is the common state of modern education.

For a society, this is a horrible state of affairs. In a land of liberty, this semi-controlled and semi-anarchic sub-society is a cancer to the longevity of the principles of the greater society. It forms collective ideals and operation based on social pressures and non-committal engagement: ie the controlled structure of the education system where students "work", where the students themselves have little real influence or control, leads students to believe that their system will always be there for them, and their contrary absolute control over their social sub-society leads them to act in groups for the purpose of benefitting their group and making their group look better and hold greater social capital, the currency of modern college students, creates a situation where collective thinking is promoted by nature, and control is ceded to those in power, not as representatives, but as monarchs.

Recognizing this analysis, I have considered an alternative view of education. Education in the US has been expanded, and many negative effects have directly come from it. Other effects include the delay of marriages, citizens having more relationships both meaningful and casual, less operational experience with self-reliance, etc. This can be seen as a deterioration in the maturity of the citizenry. Even assuming college could achieve its grand ideals of truly preparing all students to become great thinkers and disciplined leaders, the damage done through the postponement of stable relationships and self-reliance would cause great harm. It is for this purpose that education should not be "extended". Rather, education would best be served through acceleration.

The extension of education should be reserved for those who have already become self-sufficient. In order to achieve greater levels of morality, virtue, and social success, it should be deemed essential to assure citizens the capability to be prepared for life at the earliest age possible. For the longevity of our society, this is a must.

I implore my readers to discuss this idea with friends, colleagues, and representatives of your community, if possible. This is a deep topic and deserving of much discussion. In my eyes, it is essential to raise our kids to be better than us, ready younger, raised stronger (physically, mentally, emotionally), and with better character than we could ever hope to achieve. I am not sure what you would do to accelerate your child's education. I will be reading to my kids advanced lessons and stories of greatness that they cannot understand from a young age, so that they may always be pursuing an understanding that may otherwise be beyond their grasp. Pushing my kids beyond their limits, like an athlete lifting a weight they have never been able to lift before so that they can become stronger. I would like to see our public education system embrace accelerated learning for students capable of graduating high school as early as 16 or even 14. This would allow teachers to better tailor their material to their students, based on their pace of learning and the path they choose to take. Financially, it may not be viable with teachers unions crushing our education system and red tape costing our schools more on administrators than educators. However, perhaps some private schools could develop such programs. Let me know what you think below. I'm interested in your opinions on this topic. Am I crazy, or do you think accelerating education and realigning how our society uses colleges and basic education is essential?

TL;DR: Schools need acceleration programs for students to graduate early and colleges need to have their purpose realigned for the betterment of our society and not so focused on being their own sub-societies.

-James