I'm 21 now, I went to an upper-class school during all my HS years, I feel like that was a waste of time: I was hungry and tired all the time, the teachers had a habit of humiliating and belittling students, there wasn´t physical bullying but there was social one( the psychological damage taken from being insulted by someone weaker than you and not as intelligent as you while not being able to punch back because if you punch him you get suspension even tho you are in the right is hard to calculate), and if it depended solely upon my school I wouldn´t have learned a single thing! only the act of skipping class so I could go read and study in a library and the fact I had to take it upon myself to go to an individual tutor to learn many subjects should tell you everything you need to know. I feel like those years were straight-up stolen from me and may have permanently diminished my potential, this is a source of great worry to me.
Now that you are out of school, your potential is only determined by the actions you take from here on. You can't change the past but your actions now have a great influence over your future. Put in the hard work and your time in school will seem insignificant in your story.
It's seems ironic that the most loved teachers are often the ones who are the most creative, open and forgiving to their students! There are teachers who actually have some of these qualities.
Fun fact: The Mexica (Aztecs) were actually the first or among the first to have compulsory education for children regardless of gender or social class, something unheard before that time.
Finally someone addressing this issue... The number of young people saying"I hate school or learning" is outrageous, not to mention the increase in depression rates and admissions to psychiatric hospitals during highschool/university
AI is going to super charge humans. Not in the way you think. But by being a means to gain skill and understanding. GPT 3.5 is already capable of doing so. It enabled me to learn many things that I cannot even imagine Googling. I think as time goes on more and more people will realize that they don't need to go to school to learn and be equipped for the world. But I am afraid cultural changes are much slower than technological advancement. We might see AGI before the education system is overthrown.
While I believe much of social media and all sorts of pleasure seeking activities are addictive, I would say the root starts here, because the system makes people docile to the point where they have little free will over themselves, and while the internet gives free reign for discovery, the damage is done.
