The Matrix of the K-12 Education System in Lebanon | Carel Tayeh | TEDxAIS Ajaltoun Youth
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pMn3hNYAW8 Video ID: 0pMn3hNYAW8 ============================================================ [Music] Imagine waking up one day and realizing that every choice you ever made, what subjects to study, what career to pursue, how you measure success was never truly yours. Imagine that from the moment you learned to read and write, you were not being taught how to think, but what to think. That your dreams, potential, and identity were sculpted not by your own passions, but by an invisible force designed to mold you into a predefined role. What if I told you that the very foundation of our education system, the system we rely on to shape young minds, was never meant to nurture curiosity, creativity, or intellectual greatness, but rather to mass-roduce obedient workers for an economic machine? What if the choices you believed were personal and free were in reality the only choices you were ever allowed to see? Let's step back for a moment. You enter school at the age of three or four, wideeyed, full of questions and hungry to explore. Slowly, the system begins its work. You learn that there are right and wrong answers not just in math but in life. that authority is absolute, that questioning too much is disruptive, and that success is measured by numbers, not by knowledge, in which you are sorted and ranked. By personal experience, my childhood has been filled with laughter and innocence in which my decisions and personality today are based on the values that have been transferred to my child's self, shaping me today and making me the person I am. In other words, our modern education system has become so carefully designed and structured in which you we fail to predict what is meant to be true and what is merely a constructed illusion. In addition um to start talking about this subject I would like to say that my experience in school and today has been has made me realize that the very structure in which we live today rigid schedules bells dictating our every move. The passive absorption of information without room for debate mirrors that of industrial labor training. It was never about unlocking human potential. It was about creating a society that runs efficiently, predictably, and most importantly, without rebellion. At the start of 15 years old, your worth becomes a GPA or a university acceptance. While becoming more aware of my surroundings, my main objective was to make my parents proud. thinking that my worth depended only on the compliments I received by elders. You you're so smart and disciplined, they said, making me think that the chance to excel and make a career based on my passions for piano or tennis was based on a 1% probability. I mean, how many times have we been told what success should look like? study hard, get good grades, attend a prestigious university, secure a highpaying job. But success, according to whom? A child passionate about painting is told that art is just a hobby, while another child brilliant in mechanics but struggling in algebra is labeled underachieving. The irony is that history celebrates those who broke free from this mold. College dropouts Steve Jobs and Elon Musk openly criticized traditional schooling, stating that the system fails to nurture problem solving and creativity. At the start of adulthood, if the very minds that revolutionized our world had to step outside the education system to truly create, then what does that say about the system itself? Furthermore, ladies and gentlemen, the modern education system is a carefully designed structure meant to shape identical so-called unique citizens, not independent thinkers, tracing back to the Prussian education model, which was never meant to give birth to innovators, but to train disciplined soldiers. In contrast, this routine is so deeply embedded that we rarely question it, making us think that the chance to pursue a true reality is absent, reality is absent. Uh, on another point of view, if we're going to talk about theories, doesn't COVID 19 and overpopulation ring a bell? Hasn't anyone wondered during the two years we forcefully stayed at home in what kind of experiments were happening in the world? Some say the virus was purposely made in hopes to kill the unimportant ones to sell the many forms of vaccine while others say that it was a calculated project to hide the world from dangerous experiments wanting to be executed by the government. As for me, I wouldn't have aligned with any of these suggestions until the day where my mom where my mom's Facebook post was deleted by the application. Truthfully, even if I'm not really going to share my mom's Facebook account, I remember vividly watching the video explaining the connection between the leak of 5G radiations and their effects on human health followed by the spread of the supposedly real virus. As I watched in awe and fear, connecting the dots wasn't so difficult. It all depended on whether I was ready to grasp and speak about the truth of possible corruption or simply let it go. And the decision I finally made is pretty obvious. If world leaders truly believed these theories were false, why silence them instead of responding democratically and gaining trust? Despite all the representatives metaphorical support to win your approval, true knowledge means nothing to them as much as the strongest lettered word that corrupts humanity, power. Limiting human potential has become part of who we are. Um, material gain and control are at the root of the absence of true knowledge. Not just for us, the materially unfortunate, but for the materially uncapable to pay. Why isn't the vow for richer or poorer applied between the government and its people? Work may meet our needs, but education isn't free. How can we speak about equality when the main objective of the system isn't to heal or educate, but simply to make us feel powerless and profit from our lives? labor. As cruel as the absence of education is, the limit of information is just as damaging. Haven't you ever wondered what we or the hidden minds around us could achieve if we were taught the right ways to succeed? I believe we all have. But when curiosity to fight for what is better is absent and life's habits are already set, change becomes almost impossible. On another hand, not understanding something in class might be intimidating. But what I think should be intimidating to everyone is that what we learn in school doesn't even approach 5% of knowledge in general. This leads me to show you the importance of the hidden curriculum, combining the correct methods of thinking and the facts that remain unknown. Both of these mechanisms being able to form a smart and intellectual individual who has finally reached the point of complete wisdom. Going back in history, since the birth of human art, many authors took the matter of their own beliefs into their own hands and published many truths for the whole world to see. Some of the books being censored at first due to their lack of conformity with the ideology and norms of society. Now, if I'm going to present to you all a credible explanation of my own educational testimony proving my point about the hidden curriculum, I would take as an example the censored writings of George Orwell, including 1984 or Animal Farm. Both of these texts being learned by my classmates and I some years ago, if they were standing in front of me today in which both of these books would be conversed, my question to them would be, "Have you ever really thought about the reason why these books were banned and the symbolism behind the elements of the stories?" I believe their answer would be I don't think I remember the story very well or something like I haven't really thought this far. This insinuates that this oblivious state revolving around the corrupted reality we live in is because that one second of reflection was inhalated by common test questions surrounding only the structure of the text in this case. Additionally, from a scientific point of view, while we sit and learn briefly about the way the Earth and planets work, how can we memorize a physics formula when theories somewhat stating that the landing of the moon was fake and the publicity stunt against two rival countries are still out there. I mean, maybe the landing did happen. Although how can you explain the sudden death of people who elaborated these theories and the refusal of Neil Armstrong himself to talk about the trip even 20 years later? If by curiosity you are willing to look into the subject later, many sources on Google might say that this uncertainty is absurd, where the arguments of incorrect editing are overshadowed by sites stating that the main reason for these imperfections was that photography wasn't as developed as it is today. Now, we probably might agree that these articles were written by people working and living amongst us, but they simply translate and convey what is needed to be transmitted to the public, not placing a difference between Orwell's big brother and the world's representatives. Furthermore, the impact of the matrix doesn't only forcefully prevent h human freedom in general, but biologically it changes our minds and the way we think to adapt to the freedom we were taught. Biologically the brain undergoes many kinds of changes which we can refer to as the term neuroplasticity circling around the capacity to realize something learned and automatically take action on it playing a crucial role in the process of marginalization of society. The prefrontal cortex is responsible for independent thought and decision making and remains malleable through development. However, when educational curricula present a narrow quantity of information, they may inadvertently limit the the possible development leading to cognitive biases and potentially molding perceptions, hence banning uniqueness and self-creativity. This concept can be related to the simulation hypothesis, illustrating that our reality might be of artificial construct and the theory of hyper reality. Illustrating also that our modern society has become so saturated with many kinds of theories about our reality that we fail to distinguish between what is real and what is merely fiction. This idea, also related to the movie The Matrix, makes us notice that even when reality is quite literally presented in front of us, our unconscious uses the excuse of studied fiction in cinema, as our world is already filled with artificial media and technology. Yet the government's vague responses only deepen public suspicion, making them passively accept the world as it is presented to them. However, we should not forget that escaping the so-called life simulation makes us the protagonists and heroes of truth. The choice remains yours. Are you still able to live in oblivion, proving the success of the man manipulative works of the matrix? Or will you be able to escape and access true happiness? Before closing the door on this beautiful and expressive opportunity, I am standing in front of all of you as a senior student who has spent 15 years in this establishment. Wanting with this final project to bid farewell to my high school chapter. Dear guests, to not embed any confusion, I will as my peers attend a renowned university based on the results of my work throughout the knowledge given to me during all of these years. The point of the subject isn't to neglect what this educational system offers us. The main conclusion should revolve around the capacity to balance what is asked from us as society members as as well as grasp the full thinking capacity of our brain and passions. This being said, I want to thank my parents, my friends, my teachers, and every person that I crossed paths with that altered my life's perceptions. To further embed this message into each and every one of you, I leave you with this. If every prisoner had to break free from the prison to truly create, then what does that say about the then what does that say about the cage itself? And if we never challenge this reality, hence try and break free, then were we ever really free at all? Thank you. [Music]