The Forbidden Education: Beyond School Walls – Deep Dive in 15 YouTube videos – 禁止的教育

Briefing Document: The Crisis in Modern Education and Potential Paths Forward

This briefing synthesizes key themes and arguments from various sources regarding the perceived failures of contemporary education systems and explores alternative philosophies and solutions. A central tension emerges between traditional, standardized, and often punitive educational models and a growing advocacy for more holistic, creative, and student-centered approaches.

I. The Deep-Rooted Problems of Current Education Systems

Multiple sources highlight the severe shortcomings and negative consequences of prevailing educational paradigms, particularly in their failure to adapt to modern societal needs and their detrimental impact on student well-being.

A. Academic Pressure and Mental Health Crisis (Asia-Specific but Globally Relevant)

• Extreme Pressure and Suicide Rates: “Asia’s Brutal Education Is K*lling Students (Literally)” reveals a shocking reality: “a high school girl was found dead in her room her note reads I’m sorry Mom and Dad I couldn’t fulfill your dreams ad mistra ended her life because of a bad score on her exam her story is only one in thousands.” This pressure leads to devastating outcomes, with “a third of students in South Korea have contemplated ending their lives because of academic pressure” and self-inflicted death being “the leading cause of death for children in Japan.” In China, schools even “install metal bars on windows to prevent students from jumping off.”
• High-Stakes Examinations: The source emphasizes the role of national entrance exams like China’s Gaokao, Japan’s Common Test, India’s JEE, and South Korea’s Suneung. A low score on these exams “could mean a low-income job and discrimination from society.” The intensity is such that “the G call is treated like a national holiday all construction stops traffic diversions are created airplane paths are changed to reduce noise.”
• Grueling Schedules and “Modern Slavery”: Students endure “16 hours at work a day, a lack of freedom and physical abuse from authorities.” A South Korean student’s day can involve school until 4 pm, cram school until 9 pm, library self-study until 11 pm, and continued studying at home until 2 am, leaving “only 4 hours to sleep.” This rigorous schedule is a “necessity,” not an option.
• Toxic Competition and Physical Abuse: Public display of grades and scores fosters a “very toxic culture around competition,” leading to “shame insecurity and even bullying.” Disturbingly, physical abuse is common: the narrator recounts witnessing a six-year-old being “smacked with a wooden stick” for a wrong answer in China. In 2011, “98% of South Korean students reported physical punishment from their teachers,” and in some cases, students were “beaten to death.”
• Suppression of Mental Health: Asian culture’s emphasis on “Perfection” makes mental health issues a “sign of weakness,” leading students to “hide their emotions and struggle and they almost never seek help.” This results in limited and underutilized mental health resources, with “70% of South Korean students who ended their lives did not show any unusual characteristics at all.”

B. Outdated and Industrial-Revolution Era Design

• “Cogs in a Machine”: “The Education System Is Dead — And AI Just Buried It” states bluntly that the “educational system was designed for the industrial revolution not for the information age.” Its purpose was “to make you a good cog in the system a system that where you go work in a factory and you’d eventually retire and that was your life.”
• Prussian Model Influence: “School has FAILED you. (Here’s why)” and “La Educación Prohibida – Película Completa HD Oficial” trace the roots of modern schooling back to the 19th-century Prussian model, designed to “prepare kids for a life of obedience and working in factories for very low wages” and “create an educational body that will steer the way French people think.” This model promoted “discipline, obedience and an authoritarian regime.”
• Assembly Line Approach: Schools mirror the “assembly line in industrial production,” grouping children by age into “school grades” and teaching “specific concepts” determined by “an expert.” This leads to a “purely mechanical” process where “one teacher per year, per subject, every 30 or 40 students” makes personalized attention impossible (“La Educación Prohibida”).

C. Stifling Creativity and Critical Thinking

• Education Out of Creativity: Sir Ken Robinson, in “Do schools kill creativity?”, passionately argues, “my contention is that creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.” However, he observes, “we don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out of it.” Children’s natural willingness to “take a chance” and not be “frightened of being wrong” is lost by adulthood, as “we run our national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make.”
• Focus on Memorization over Understanding: All sources lament the emphasis on rote learning. “School has FAILED you” highlights how getting a good grade often means simply “spit back the same information we were told as closely as possible.” “The Education System Is Dead” questions the continued teaching of memorization “in a world where AI gives us instant answers.” “La Educación Prohibida” shows children repeating facts without understanding, becoming “repeaters,” and arguing that “learning becomes a tiresome process, a difficult process, and I stop learning.”
• Suppressed Curiosity and Inquiry: “La Educación Prohibida” states that children are naturally curious, constantly asking “why this? why that?” but school “silences him,” leading to a loss of curiosity and keenness to learn by age 12. Education is “answer-oriented” rather than “questioning, inquiring.”

D. Dehumanizing and Alienating Environment

• Grades and Comparison: The grading system is seen as primarily for “comparison” and “determining the sort of person you are,” leading to “winners and losers” and making “someone feels bad.” (“La Educación Prohibida”).
• Lack of Personalization: Schools “don’t have the capacity to fulfill individual needs” because they are “training centers.” The system “selects the type of people that will get to University” for an elite, and others for “less certain jobs.” (“La Educación Prohibida”).
• School as “Children’s Parking Lot” or “Prison”: Some view schools as a “big Day Care Center” or “big Children’s Parking Lot” where children are “locked up,” needing “guards to avoid them escaping,” and walls “that isolate, that separate.” (“La Educación Prohibida”).
• Disconnect from Real Life: Curricula are often “disconnected from reality.” Students learn things they are “not interested in” because they are told they “might need it one day,” but this knowledge “doesn’t endure nor prevail for very long” as “paradigms are changing very rapidly.” (“La Educación Prohibida”).

E. Financial and Structural Challenges in Western Systems

• High Student Debt & Declining Quality: The “I would never go back to academia” source critically analyzes American universities, arguing they are “not actually serving students well anymore.” Students incur “massive amounts of debt” (average $30,000 per year for an undergraduate degree) while receiving “increasingly… not a high quality education.”
• “Experience” over Academics: Universities are criticized for marketing themselves as providing an “experience” (events, luxurious gyms, fancy dining halls), diverting money to these amenities at the “expense of academics.” Harvard, for example, has “over three administrators” for every faculty member, many of whom are focused on student life rather than teaching and research.
• Diluted Academic Rigor: The source claims a “push to make classes easier and less demanding,” leading to lower expectations and hindering students’ ability to engage with challenging material. Students “aren’t used to reading novels or just whole books or even long articles” due to high school’s focus on standardized test formats.
• Teacher Compensation and Morale: “Why The Education System Is Failing America” highlights a severe “teacher pay penalty,” with teachers earning “nearly 20%” less than similarly educated professionals, a gap that has “gotten worse over time.” This leads to low retention rates, shortages, and teachers needing “a second job.” The profession’s historical categorization as “women’s work” contributed to its “relatively low paid work” status.
• Common Core Failure: The Common Core initiative, an ambitious attempt to standardize and improve US education, “did not have a dramatic impact on student achievement.” Critics argue it “took away the control from teachers” and failed to account for students’ diverse learning paces and financial difficulties (poverty being a significant barrier to academic success).

II. Visions for a Transformed Education

Amidst these critiques, the sources offer diverse perspectives on what a more effective and humane education system might look like.

A. Holistic and Individualized Learning

• Respecting the Child’s Nature: “La Educación Prohibida” asserts that “the core of education is the child.” Children are “born with this ability to create, they are creative and observant and curious,” and education should “accompany this process and stimulate activities which will develop this ability, or to thwart it.”
• Beyond Academic Ability: Sir Ken Robinson advocates for a “radical rethink” of intelligence, recognizing it as “diverse” (visual, sound, kinesthetic, abstract, movement) and “dynamic.” He emphasizes that creativity often arises from “the interaction of different disciplinary ways of seeing things.”
• Integrated Learning and Environment: “La Educación Prohibida” proposes a “comprehensive, holistic education” that balances “head, heart and hands.” It suggests an “integrated education” where subjects are interconnected (“Maths are History, and they are Language, and Geography at the same time”) and learning happens through “interaction with others and with the environment,” not just a pre-designed curriculum.
• Learning Through Play and Experience: “Children learn all these things through play.” “Play is a challenge into the unknown.” The ideal school should be an “experimentation bench” with “a host of possibilities,” where children can “discover, to touch, to follow their own impulses, without anyone attempting to teach them.” (“La Educación Prohibida”).
• Emotional Education and Love: “Emotions form the foundation for making life tick.” Education should foster “much more loving, sound relationships in the classroom.” Love, affection, acceptance, respect, and trust are seen as vital for development and learning, contrasting with “threats, punishment, tension.” (“La Educación Prohibida”).

B. Empowering Students and Teachers

• Student Agency and Choice: Students should be able to “choose what to learn and how to learn it,” select subjects, and proffer “self-generated activities.” (“La Educación Prohibida”). This includes “freedom to learn at their own pace, and to not learn what they don’t want to learn.”
• Self-Assessment and Process-Oriented Evaluation: Instead of external grades, evaluation should be process-centered, with children self-assessing their work and progress. This means questioning the need for “exams and grades.” (“La Educación Prohibida”).
• Teacher as Guide, Not Imposer: The teacher’s role should be to “accompany a learning process,” acting as a “guide” who “sows seeds,” “leads,” and “offers opportunities and pretexts for the child to explore.” This requires teachers to be “observers” and to “love everything he has lived through in the past so as to be able to turn and transform it.” (“La Educación Prohibida”).
• Teacher Development and Self-Knowledge: Teachers must engage in a “constant process of self-development,” a “profound job concerning sensibility, consciousness, harmony, and joy” to be effective. (“La Educación Prohibida”).
• Community Involvement and Intergenerational Learning: Education should be an “open space” integrated with the community, allowing for “intergenerational relationships” where younger and older students learn from each other. (“La Educación Prohibida”).

C. Practical Skills and Future Preparedness

• Goal Setting and Embracing Failure: “School has FAILED you” emphasizes the importance of teaching “how to set goals” and “how important it is to fail,” as “by avoiding failure you’re missing out on valuable learning experiences.”
• Critical Thinking and Media Literacy: Schools should foster critical thinking to enable students to “question assumptions, evaluate evidence and analyze information from multiple perspectives,” making them less susceptible to “media manipulation” and “electing leaders for the wrong reasons.” (“School has FAILED you”).
• Financial Literacy: The lack of money management education is a major oversight, as it’s “by far one of the most important skills in life.” Understanding taxes connects citizens to their community’s development. (“School has FAILED you”).
• Conflict Resolution (“How to Argue”): Learning a “framework for arguing” is crucial for navigating disagreements effectively, fostering the ability to “listen to opposing ideas, seek consensus and respect a well-constructed argument even when they disagree with it.” (“School has FAILED you”).
• Entrepreneurship and Self-Reliance: Introducing entrepreneurship instills “resourcefulness and a proactive mindset,” encouraging students to “carve their own path, pursue their passions and contribute to the world around them in a meaningful way.” (“School has FAILED you”).
• AI Literacy: “The Education System Is Dead — And AI Just Buried It” strongly advocates for teaching “AI literacy as young as elementary school,” recognizing that future jobs “are going to depend upon their ability to use it.” AI can “enhance, not decrease our creativity” by reducing “grunt work.”

D. Reforming the System and Philosophical Shifts

• Beyond External Validation: The source “I would never go back to academia” expresses a personal decision to leave traditional academia, finding more impact “talking about it on YouTube or writing about it on substack” than in the classroom. This suggests a need for education to move beyond conventional structures and embrace new forms of knowledge dissemination and engagement.
• Rejecting Government Recognition (Indian Context): Indutai Katdare’s perspective (“Indutai Katdare on How to Raise Wise, Rooted and Resilient Children”) advocates for education systems to be independent of government recognition, viewing it as a British colonial legacy that undermines the “supremacy of knowledge” over “state power.” She argues that “knowledge sector people are the ones who guide society and the state.” Her model emphasizes self-sufficiency through “bhiksha” (alms/donations) and community support, recalling a tradition where villages fully funded gurukuls.
• Reviving Cultural Heritage: Katdare’s vision for education includes providing “full Indian knowledge,” not a diluted mix. She emphasizes the role of media like film as “means of public education” and “public संस्कार (cultural conditioning),” where audiences are not merely “customers” but “viewers” to be educated about their culture and values.
• Early Childhood Development and Parental Role: Katdare stresses the critical role of parents, stating “child is not a problem, parent is the real problem.” Her institution focuses on educating “future parents” from the age of 17, including preparation for marriage, family life, and even the process of conception (garbhadhan sanskar) to produce “capable children.” She advocates for natural, home births due to the emotional and developmental benefits for both mother and child, arguing that hospital births can disrupt the “spiritual bond” and sensory development.
• Questioning Authority and Self-Responsibility: “La Educación Prohibida” highlights that students should be empowered to “take responsibility for what we wrote,” question teachers, and participate in decision-making processes regarding their learning. This fosters “auto-discipline” where individuals “consciously construct their own behavior.”
• Unschooling and Diversity of Methods: The film suggests “unschooling” the school by “removing everything that is scholarly” and “everything that prevents students from learning.” It advocates for a paradigm where “as many proposals as there are free and autonomous experiences” exist, embracing diverse pedagogical methods (Active Education, Libertarian, Democratic, Home Schooling, etc.).

III. Obstacles to Educational Reform

Despite widespread recognition of problems and proposed solutions, significant challenges hinder meaningful change.

• Systemic Inertia and Fear of Change: “La Educación Prohibida” notes that “the easiest thing for a traditional teacher is to keep repeating what he has done for many years.” There is a “fear that freedom and the lack of a sense of authority… will generate indiscipline or disorder.” “The Education System Is Dead” observes that “the fear… shown by the use of of artificial intelligence by the teachers is understandable but misdirected.”
• Politicization of Education: Common Core’s failure is largely attributed to its “politicalization,” where “all bets were off” once it became associated with specific political parties or leaders, regardless of its effectiveness. (“Why The Education System Is Failing America”).
• Academic Inflation and Irrelevant Research: “I would never go back to academia” and “The Thesis that Killed Academia?” point to a problem of “academic inflation” where higher degrees are required for jobs previously needing less, and an abundance of academic research (especially in humanities, but also theoretical physics) is perceived as “nonessential drivel” and “infinitely much of this stuff… written to get jobs, read by no one,” for which taxpayers don’t want to pay.
• Lack of Government Commitment to Root Causes: The US government’s efforts to reform education are seen as failing to address “the underlying problem of student performance, and that is poverty.” (“Why The Education System Is Failing America”).
• Parental Mindset: Some parents are criticized for their “anaadi (ignorant)” approaches, immediately using phones with newborns, and lacking the deep understanding of child-rearing needed (“Indutai Katdare”). Parents may also externalize responsibility for education, seeing it as a “professional activity” to be outsourced to institutions.
• Teachers’ Own Systemic Conditioning: “La Educación Prohibida” notes that teachers themselves often come from “repressive education” and may not know how to handle their own emotions, thus struggling to teach emotional well-being. They may also be “less capable of questioning education” because they are products of the very system they operate within.

IV. Conclusion: A Call for Fundamental Transformation

The consensus across these sources is that the current education system is largely broken and ill-suited for the modern world. There is a strong call for a fundamental rethinking of its purpose, structure, and values. This involves shifting from a factory-model, test-driven, and authority-centric approach to one that prioritizes creativity, critical thinking, emotional intelligence, personalized learning, and a deep respect for the individual child’s innate capacity for learning and growth. Achieving this transformation will require challenging deeply ingrained societal norms, confronting political obstacles, and fostering a collaborative spirit among students, teachers, parents, and communities. The future of society, it is argued, depends on whether we can truly educate our children’s “whole being” and empower them to navigate an unpredictable world with wisdom, resilience, and creative potential.