We love specialisation. We love it so much that we teach it to our children from a very early age. After I moved to the USA my child's Elementary school had a "spirit day" where they get to wear the raiment of their favourite University. Just think about that for one moment; we're talking about children of ages 5 to 10, who are invited to choose their favourite university! At that age I wasn't even qualified to choose my favourite flavour of ice cream when presented with more than 3 flavours! My daughter, quite understandably came to me and said "Daddy I don't understand, I don't know anything about college?", and really who would expect her to at age 6? And yet there were all the other kids parading around in their various Ivy League, or State University uniforms proudly.
For me this raises many questions, and I hope it does for the readers too, and has more parallels with religion than I'm comfortable talking about (which is the subject of another post probably!)
But I wonder, upon what are these children basing their choices of college on? Almost certainly the opinion of their parents. In general the parents of the children at this particular school, don't even question whether there is a need for the fruits of their loins to even attend a university, but clearly, not just any university, we've already bought them the uniform of the best college, which is apparently, highly likely to be the one the parent went to (no confirmation bias here at all).
These kids have barely learned to write their own names, and the college funds are already in full swing, along with the pre-indoctrination of where to study, and very likely what to study, and as the natural follow-on what to do once they graduate!
Is it any wonder that we're finding a shortage of creative problem solvers in the world? Why would anyone learn to think for themselves, when they encouraged from their earliest experiences to be mini clones?
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