It's time to stop oppressing the academically dis-inclined

In order to live you have to earn money. Unless you're a trust fund baby this means you're going to have to work. In order to work you need academic credentials. At the very least you need a G.E.D. or a high school diploma. Anyone over the age of 18 who doesn't have a high school diploma will find it almost impossible to get any job other than entry level customer service work or hard manual labor. Most of these jobs pay minimum wage with little hope for advancement, health care or retirement plans. Being a hard, obedient worker won't help you rise above your station in life; that's just what's expected of wage slaves. You can pull yourself out of a life of poverty and thankless work by being really, really clever, but if you're not academically inclined enough to get a high school degree you're probably not clever enough to start your own business or teach yourself a rare job skill.

This means that if you're not academically inclined enough to pass high school then you're basically doomed to waste the rest of your life working as hard and long as possible for little money as possible. You'll never have enough money to buy a brand new car, a house or go on lavish vacations. Some people would say, "That's what you get for screwing up." To that I would reply, "You're a heartless monster." Failing high school does not mean you deserve to suffer for a minute, let alone the rest of your life.

Even if you are academically inclined enough to get a high school diploma but you're not smart enough to get a degree from an accredited university you're still stuck in basically the same position as those who don't have a high school diploma at all. You'll pretty much be limited to entry level work unless you can get some kind of trade certification. Some trade certifications will qualify you for jobs that pay a living wage. Some will even qualify you for a job that pays above a living wage, but statistically speaking, without a college degree you'll probably never live the good life, and the only way you'll be able to achieve financial security is by saving every penny you make and not enjoying any of the finer things in life during the best years of your life.

Faced with the prospect of having to work as a disposable wage slave for decades many people have chosen to sell drugs and commit violent acts of crime to earn money. Some of these people can be rightfully accused of being hopeless, ethics-less monsters, but many of them are simply choosing the most logical path to prosperity that society has allowed them. Our education/credentialization system is as much to blame for their crimes as they are, because our heartless, broken system forced them into that position where the risk of committing crime was less than the risk of working.

The punishment for failing at school is a life of destitution, servitude, malnutrition, exhaustion and hopelessness. This is not the way an enlightened society behaves, and the more we punish the academically disinclined the worse we make society. From a cosmic perspective we're also wasting the potential of infinitely valuable life forms who took 14.7 billion years to create. Furthermore, our failure to treat our fellow human beings decently puts a black stain on all of our accomplishments. As long as the oppression of the academically disinclined continues we all deserve a hard kick in the groin, especially our politicians and education administrators.
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