Epilogue.

NOTE: Please scroll back to "Part 1 of 3" to read from the beginning.

This is a meditation on education. This is an open window into a world with few options. This is unavoidable.

There are justifications for every human act because everything a human does comes from an instinct, a drive, a thought. It all has a genesis in reason, however flawed, however mired in the ebbs and flows of sanity. There is always an explanation, even if it is difficult to accept.

Those flickers of human reasoning, those choices made on instincts too much a part of us to deny, are shaped by our options. Our options are shaped by the world we encounter. The world we encounter is the puppet-master, denying us the ability to see a way out because there may not be a way out. The world we encounter is in control.

Education is important beyond math and beyond socialization. It opens a world of options that don't otherwise exist. It forces the development of critical thinking, of self-directed decisions, of a concept of alternatives. It makes us see that there are multiple solutions to each of our problems.

What we are seeing in schools is not education. We are raising whole generations of people incapable of seeing beyond the surface, incapable of understanding the heart of the matter. We are building tomorrow's world with no foundation.

Students are allowed to pass from grade to grade with no concept of how far behind they are, and no reason to improve. They are told that this is all they will ever have. They are discouraged from wanting more. Their options are limited by their stunted abilities. They hardly know the difference between a murder and a spanking.

This is unavoidable.