If education were truly the key to prosperity, degree holders would not form the most anxious and financially burdened segment of society today. If schools genuinely taught freedom, millions of educated people would not live in constant fear of their salaries, nor would submission to a boss be mistaken for the purpose of life. And if curricula spoke honestly, those who ask questions and think creatively would be celebrated as architects of the future, not dismissed as failures.

From childhood, we are fed a single dream: good education, a good job, and a secure, predictable life. This narrative is repeated so often that it becomes unquestionable. Yet every year, when millions of educated young people stand in humiliating queues for employment, clutching their degrees like survival certificates, we still call this “success.” Why?
This is not a question about individual incompetence. It is a devastating question about the role and design of the education system itself.
The Real Purpose of the Education System: Producing Conformity
The uncomfortable truth is that the modern education system was never designed to create independent, confident, and self-directed individuals. Its primary function is to produce people who fit neatly into existing systems. Individuals trained to follow instructions, avoid questioning authority, and accept the structure as it is rather than imagining how it could be changed.
This design is no accident. Schools mirror factories. Bells dictate movement, students sit in rows, everyone studies the same material, and everyone is judged by the same narrow metrics. Within this structure, creativity, individuality, and dissent are treated as inconveniences rather than strengths.
Education, as it stands, rewards obedience far more than insight.
A Colonial Legacy and the Science of Obedience
The roots of this system run deep into the industrial age. During the Industrial Revolution, societies needed disciplined workers for factories—people who could follow schedules, repeat tasks endlessly, and not question orders. Schools were engineered accordingly.
In India, the damage was compounded by colonial intent. The education reforms of 1835 under Lord Macaulay were explicitly designed to create a class of people who were Indian by body but English by mind—clerks, administrators, and office workers who would help run the empire rather than challenge it.
The nation gained political independence, but the educational blueprint remained largely unchanged. Even today, success is narrowly defined as securing a job, preferably within the same bureaucratic or corporate frameworks inherited from colonial rule.
The Biggest Deception: The Absence of Financial Intelligence
Years are spent in classrooms, yet students are never taught the most critical life skill: how money actually works. There is no meaningful education on the difference between income and assets, on investment principles, taxation, entrepreneurship, or value creation.
Students learn only one economic model: trade your time for a salary.
They are trained to become employees, not owners. They are prepared to survive within systems, not to design them. This is where the divide emerges between an employee mindset—one that seeks security and fears failure—and an entrepreneurial mindset, which sees risk as opportunity and focuses on building assets rather than chasing paychecks.
The concentration of global wealth in the hands of a few is not accidental. It exists because the majority are trained to serve systems, not to create them.
The Silent Suffering of the Educated but Unfulfilled
One of the least discussed consequences of this system is emotional. The educated yet economically dissatisfied individual often lives with quiet despair. They internalize failure, measure themselves against societal expectations, and carry a persistent sense of inadequacy.
This emotional toll is the by-product of incomplete education—education that provides certificates without clarity, information without confidence, and discipline without autonomy. The problem is not education itself, but education stripped of purpose.
Breaking the Trap: Rethinking What Education Should Mean
The solution is not abandoning schools or rejecting formal education altogether. The solution lies in expanding our understanding of education. Alongside academic learning, young people must be taught financial literacy, practical skills, critical thinking, and the ability to learn independently.
We must stop telling children that employment is the only definition of success. Instead, we must teach them that success means autonomy, dignity, and the ability to make meaningful choices about one’s life. Nations progress not by producing compliant workers, but by nurturing questioning minds.
If we truly want a strong, self-reliant, and dignified society, we must confront an uncomfortable question:
Is our education system creating free, creative thinkers—or merely manufacturing obedient workers?
Until we recognize and dismantle this education trap, generations will continue to carry the weight of degrees while freedom, prosperity, and self-determination remain dreams reserved for a few.

Email:-------------------junaidsirsolapur@gmail.com