Dr. Yaron Brook on Mathematics and Education

Some of this quote you might disagree with, some of this quote might seem very controversial, but some of it you should strongly agree with, and all of it is food for thought and should be seriously discussed:

Public education is destroying our kids. It’s destroying future generations. It’s destroying their ability to think, their ability to reason. They come out of high school ignorant and worshipping of their emotions. And you see this throughout our culture, this worship of emotion for the sake of emotion.

And it that’s the case, then those of us advocating for better ideas, for the ideas of reason, of rational self-interest, of capitalism — who are we talking to? We are talking to kids, who are now adults, who have never been taught how to think, never been taught how to use their minds, never been encouraged to use their minds. And to a large extent, one could argue it’s too late for them. It’s too late. We’re talking to people that there is no hope for.

The most important activity, if you will, in a society is education. Because that’s the training ground for adulthood, the training ground for life, it’s the training ground for thinking. And what is more important, what is more important in life, than the ability to reason, the ability to be rational? You know, kids say ‘why do I have to learn mathematics, mathematics is so boring. I’m never going to use this calculus in life.’ That’s not the point. The point is that math teaches you a certain form of using your mind, of thinking, of solving problems. It challenges your brain. But it teaches you logic through the solving of mathematical problems. So everybody, every kid, should learn math, and every kid who’s capable, to learn as much math as possible because it trains your mind. It helps it learn, it helps you learn, logic. It helps you learn to think.

So there’s nothing more important than education. And yet we’ve given this responsibility to the state, or the state has taken by force this responsibility from us. And now everybody takes that for granted that the state should educate our kids.”

—Dr. Yaron Brook, in Radical Capitalist Episode 1 of his Yaron Brook Show Podcast

Yes. Education is essentially about training young minds to reason so they are prepared for adult life. It’s what every subject in school should be directed toward.