When people don't know what to do about something many times they just give up. If they're a teacher or a parent one or many individual's lives are forever down geared from what they could have been.

I saw a friend of mine from elementary or primary school as we say in Trinidad and Tobago. He was cleaning grass from the crevices at the side of the road, that was his temp job.

Let me say that the end result looks a lot better than if there was no one there to do it at all definitely, but a couple sprays of "Roundup" the weedicide or something else would have been easier, lasted longer and done less damage to the side to road that what he and the other people who work with him do every couple of days.

He works with CEPEP, the governments bandaid for unemployment. He was an ok guy when we were in class together but the difference between him and me was that everyday almost without fail he got corporal punishment for not doing his homework and everyday without fail he and a couple guys like him were picked on and belittled by the teacher for their reading skills.

There is one day that is stuck in my mind as epitomizing the double standards that existed in my class though. That day a pretty smart girl didn't do her homework and the rule was that if you didn't do your homework you got "licks". That day the teacher said that the "guys" had a reprieve because she couldn't bring herself to beat the smart pretty girl. It wasn't that I didn't like the girl but the teacher had no problem beating other girls. It just didn't seem fair but I guess the "guys" were ok with it.

I was with them in class from standard one to five and things never got any better for them. Day after day year after year, for every class they were just laid aside, taken out of the way so the rest of the class could go ahead and learn. Whether it was because their parents didn't have the time or the wherewithall to care or make sure they did their home work they suffered and still suffer and probably their kids will suffer. This while the entire teaching system is a complete waste of time.

It's not that the teachers can't teach or that kids can't learn, it's that someone can teach till their blue in the face but they cannot force everyone in a class to learn at the same pace and while they're trying to people get left behind.

I have to reiterate what I now believe which is if kids are tested and assigned the appropriate materials for their level they can teach themselves by reading the material as many time as they need to until they prove they can go to the next level by passing another test.

For everyone who thinks that this doesn't make sense and is a dumb idea let me say that

People forget so quickly that whatever good the teacher does is lost before the class is over anyway. This I can tell you personally.

The kids who are smart aren't so because of the teacher but in spite of them and the same goes for the ones who are considered dumb.

And finally and for me this is the most major point, kids from age zero learn things on their own things that the entire scientific community of the entire world can't teach a computer to do after decades of trying and throwing probably trillions of dollars at these problems, namely how to walk, talk, and understand other human beings among other things.

The thing is that virtually all kids smart or "dumb" learn to do all these fantastic things on their own. I believe the limits that kids have are the ones that parents and teachers put on them by interfering when they fail and saying "that's enough you can't do any better"

Think about it kids probably falls a thousand and one times while they're learning to walk but a parent will never butt in because they know 99% of people walk so failure is fine in this case because eventually most of us succeed. However since a parent thinks calculus is hard after trying three times to do a problem a parent may let a child give up or even encourage it by saying "You're no good at math just like your dad."

If we did stuff like that with the basics most people would be piles of flesh, lying around, dribbling uncontrollably unable to control our bowel movements, basically we'd never grow up.

Why aren't we all geniuses? Because we think we can't be, that's the only thing between life now and Utopia, ourselves.