Our parents taught us early on that we needed to go to school so we could get a good job and live a decent life. In other words, education is the ticket which enables us to climb the social and economic ladder, despite our current class.



Yet the “mainstream” school system worldwide favors conformity, intellectual intelligence and competitiveness — the things that are required in typical, profit-making workplaces.



As Astra Taylor in Unschooling wrote, at school she experienced greed, envy, fear and conformity, all of which overpowered the desirable attributes of childhood: compassion, curiosity, imagination and playfulness.



In Indonesia and the United States, schools have been fashion runways for rich kids, while those who have less must accept that their parents cannot afford to provide them with everything they may want — usually the things they see other ...