(Will Smith's son) Jaden Smith: 'School is the tool to brainwash the youth'

[Tien1985]

47. For cripes sake

This is a 15 yr old. Lots of 15 yr olds feel this way and did long before Jaden Smith came around. He just has a huge platform to say it on.

It doesn't help that he's never wanted for anything. He can't grasp how bad NO education at all would be, and he just plain doesn't know that most people wouldn't be able to learn with schooling.

It also doesn't help that under all that 15 yr old bravado, exaggeration and ignorance there are quite a few grains of reality.

No, schooling won't brainwash you. But we do expect far too much uniformity--mostly because we won't pay the cost required for individualed education. Teachers can't be expected (though they often are) to provide 27 different courses of study and SUCEED. The result is many kids don't have the best chance of learning in most of their classes. Now, parents could step in and make up the difference, but many either can't or won't.

Kids aren't stupid and they can see there is a problem. Most don't, however, have the experience or the worldliness necessary to work out how to make things work to their advantage or even how to articulate what exactly they need. Throw in a splash of idealism and a sprinkle of "I'm insivinsible" and you have stuff like what he said.

It'll reach the level of dangerous stupidity if he is still saying it as an adult. Hopefully his parents will pull him aside and have a chat before then.