Ciro Santilli (@cirosantilli) - New articles

Chess Updated 2025-07-16

Education is broken Updated 2025-07-16

Once Ciro was at a University course practical session, and a graduate was around helping out. Ciro asked if what the graduate did anything specifically related to the course, and they replied they didn't. And they added that:

One has to put the bread on the table.

Even though Ciro was already completely disillusioned by then, that still made an impression on him. Something is really wrong with this shit.

Other people that think that the educational system is currently bullshit as of 2020:

Einstein, quoted in The New York Times, March 13 1949, p. 34:^[ref]
It is nothing short of a miracle that modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry.
Ron Maimon
Xavier Niel: fortune.com/2018/11/30/billionaire-xavier-niel/ "Want This Billionaire's Attention? Drop Out of School" (2018). He also created 42.
Year On
by Zach Caceres
- zach.dev/blog/unschooling-myself
- zach.dev/blog/mpc
Anand Raja submission "Students and Universities": publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmdius/170/170ii.pdf, www.linkedin.com/in/anandraja/.
xsrus.com/life-school-and-the-80-20-rule. Also GPA 2.0 linked from xsrus.com/ to xsrus.com/gpa-2.0 but down now
School rewards effort linearly [...]. Unlike school, the real world is nonlinear. By that, I mean most of what you do at work is a waste of time.
A Mathematician's Lament by Paul Lockhart www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf
www.learningforreal.org/ by Mary Ruth McGinn, a K12 teacher in the USA.
www.learningforreal.org/quotes/ quotes Elbert Hubbard:
School should not be preparation for life. School should BE life.
She's somewhat focused on the performing arts, but what she says applies basically equally well to the natural sciences. A talk: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggYL9gQeVEk She talks about authentic learning.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY Do schools kill creativity? by Sir Ken Robinson (2017)
Erik Finman thinks school is broken
sociable.co/technology/silicon-valley-education-students-entrepreneurs/ Bringing Silicon Valley into Schools: How to Make Students Entrepreneurs of Their Own Education (2016)
hackeducation.com/2015/04/25/factory-model The Invented History of 'The Factory Model of Education' by Audrey Watters (2015)
www.forbes.com/councils/forbescoachescouncil/2025/04/17/the-ai-fear-factor-why-leaders-resist-and-how-to-move-forward/ The Single Best Idea for Reforming K-12 Education by Steve Denning (2011)

Figure 1.
Educational systems are carried by Indian YouTubers meme
. Source. Over a Dmitriy Khaladzhi carrying a horse over his shoulders meme template.

Video 1.

Peter Gregory from Silicon Valley shows his hate for university in a fake TED talk

. Source. Key moment: someone from the crowd cries:

The true value of a college education is intangible!

to which the speaker replies:

The true value of snake oil is intangible as well.

IMDb says it's not a cameo. It really looked like one, good acting, but what a missed opportunity. Imagine a Xavier Niel appearance.

Video 2.

David Deutsch on Education interviewed by Aidan McCullen (2019)

Source.

Key quote that hits the nail:

[...] the existing assumptions behind educational systems are that the purpose of education is to transmit valuable knowledge faithfully from on generation to the next. From people who already have that knowledge, to people who don't.
So the knowledge is conceived of as a kind of valuable fluid, which you pour from one generation to the next, pour it into their brains.

So right... the purpose of education is not to teach facts. The purpose of education is to propose ways of thinking, which students themselves must try to apply and decide if it suits them! And use the patterns of thinking that are useful to reach their goals.

Like Noam Chomsky, he proposes education has been a system of indoctrination more than anything else e.g. twitter.com/daviddeutschoxf/status/1406374921748496386:

All compulsory education, "tough" or not, "love" or not, in camps or not, and whether it "traumatises" or not, is a violation of human rights.

At twitter.com/DavidDeutschOxf/status/1051475227476185089 another good quote by Churchill:

Headmasters have powers at their disposal with which Prime Ministers have never yet been invested.

The same video also mentions in passing that john Wheeler used to be Deutsch's boss, but I can't find a reference for it very easily.

Video 3.

Quote selection by Charles Bukowski (2016)

Source.

Generally speaking, you're free until you're about 4 years old. Then you go to grammar school and then you start becoming... oriented and shoved into areas. You lose what individualism you have, if you have enough of course, you retain some of it... Then you work the 8 hour job with almost a feeling of goodness, like you're doing something. Then you get married like marriage is a victory, and you have children like children is a victory... Marriage, birth, children. It's something they have to do because there's nothing else to do. There's no glory in it, there's no steam, there's no fire. It's very, very flat... You get caught into the stricture of what you're supposed to be and you have no other choice. You're finally molded and melded into what you're supposed to be. I didn't like this.