SCHOOL SUCKS

17 juni 2020 - My Tho, Vietnam

The devaluation of studying 

I have never been a great fan of going to school, I believe in general  the school system make smart people stupid. After I have said this I have to say also that I’m a great supporter of learning and then I mean learning in the most broadest way thinkable. I’m in the lucky situation that I have to deal with a lot of young people who are coming  to me for badminton training, and some of them are very good at it and it is there for pure pleasure to work with these kids. But as soon you come off the court they are almost just as helpless as when they were born, they can not make food (not even very simple things), they can not clean up the place where they are living, they have no idea how a washing machine is working and have no clue about any technical things.

This are all the practical things in life if there mother is not around, you would think it will be a lot better with things they should learn at school but it is not very seldom I meet a player who know anything about history, not the history of their own country or general history, the know how on geographical subjects is also very poor were they can not even name the capitals of most countries let alone if it gets beyond this point. But the thing that shocks me the most is the fact that they have no creativity  at all and the social skills are very very poor. 

I have no idea what they have been doing in school before they came to me, but just to come here must have opened their eyes for a whole new World. When I speak with parents they tell me that the kids HAVE to finish the education for their future. So I wonder if there is a very good future for people who can only play with their phone and do computer games?  Have no idea what the future looks like and what skills you need. Why do so many companies have problems with finding people they need and why do these companies complain about the fact that young people coming from school know nothing about the things they need? 

With the knowledge I have today I would not send my kids to school unless they really wanted to themselves, don’t force them to go to school make it very hard for them to go there so you get super motivated students. Many young people are looking forward to taking 1 or 2 year free from school to travel the World or do things that they really want to do, at this moment that is getting more normal to do so but it is still considered a delay of school time. I would say kick all kids out of school when they are between 15 and 18 years old and let them do some work, sport or traveling, in other words let them mature and find out what they want. Many kids have the dream to become very good in their sport and want to go to the Olympic games until they have tried out to live a year or 2 like a professional sportsman and they find out how hard it is. A dream is only a dream if it is not real, when you are living a dream realism  is kicking in and the dream is not so nice anymore for most of them and if it still feels great to live your dream well maybe you have found the thing where you are in your element. This way you get kids who are super motivated to do everything, when they were at school they were dreaming about the things they could not do and when they are doing this things they wish they were back in school, in real life we call this a win/win situation.