The education trap
I was eighteen when I figured this out.
Ignore that while you read this. The dates and the documents do not care how old I am.
What we already know
Around 12.97 million young people in India were out of school in 2021-22, aged six to seventeen.
Not behind. Out. Many of them cannot read or write.
We have all known this since we were sitting in a classroom ourselves. It has been background noise our whole lives.
But the part nobody asked me to look at was the other side of it — the kids who are in school.
Including me.
Somebody built this on purpose
Before anything else, go and find out who invented the school system. When. And why.
Because it was invented. It did not grow out of the ground.
India did not always do this. There was no culture here of sitting in rows, memorising a syllabus, and turning up for an exam.
Read the Vedas and you find gurukuls. Education in a home, built around the Vedas, philosophy and the arts. That ran from roughly 1500 BCE to 500 BCE.
By the Maurya and Gupta empires, we had Nalanda and Taxila. Students travelled across regions to reach them.
So where did all of that go?
Prussia
The Prussian education system was admired for one thing: efficiency.
It produced a disciplined, literate, productive workforce, exactly matched to a country that was industrialising.
That was the goal. Not curiosity. Not judgement. A literate citizenry that could meet the administrative and industrial needs of the state.
Basic literacy, basic maths, vocational skills. Enough to be productive in a job market. Not a drop more.
Britain watched this and copied it.
The Industrial Revolution was pulling people off farms and into factories, and those people needed to read instructions, operate machines and keep accounts. The Elementary Education Act of 1870 — the Forster Act — laid the foundation for compulsory schooling and government oversight.
Standardised education, straight from the Prussian playbook.
Then it arrived here
The British brought that same model to India between 1858 and 1947. Western structure, English language, modern subjects.
Traditional systems declined. That was not a side effect.
The English Education Act of 1835 is the document to read. After it, English-medium schools and colleges spread — science, medicine, law, literature, all modelled on British institutions.
The curriculum was designed to serve the colonial administration's needs. Not the development of Indian society.
It devalued what was already here, and it produced a new class of English-educated Indians who kept the British Empire running.
That policy has a name. Macaulayism, after the man who argued for it.
That is what the system was for. It worked.
Nobody turned it off
Then we got independence, and the government needed employees.
The machine for producing employees was already installed and running. So we kept it.
We still sort colleges into Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3. We still run education at the state level. The shape has barely moved.
Which means the trap the British built to staff an empire is now the path you are on.
"You need a degree"
I have heard this my whole life. Skip school and you will not get a job.
People mean it kindly. They are also right, in a narrow way.
Yes — a degree is all you need. If you want to be a job seeker. If you want to be an employee. If you are willing to put your own ideas down. And if you are ready to hand the same advice to your kid.
The degree certificate was not invented to prove you can think. It was invented so the government could hire factory workers quickly.
Look at how many government jobs are actually open now. Then look at where everyone ends up anyway.
If you are genuinely good at something, you will get work without the paper.
Skills over degrees
Here is the real cost of the factory.
Most of us come out of it with no idea what we are good at, or what we actually care about. We were never given a chance to touch the real world and find out.
So go and look. Watch what people are building. Notice what you cannot stop thinking about.
The thing that could actually get you where you want to go — that is your skill. Find it, then keep sharpening it.
No degree can stop you. And no degree can substitute for it.
You know where the system came from now. You know who it was built for, and it was not you.
Getting out of the race is your job. Nobody is going to do it for you.
Correct me where I am wrong — just DM me your thoughts.