School as Infrastructure, Not Salvation
There’s a comforting story society likes to tell: that schools “develop” students. That if someone becomes capable, thoughtful, disciplined, articulate, or successful, it must be because the institution shaped them that way. Diplomas become proof of transformation. Rankings become shorthand for intelligence. Prestige becomes moral validation.
But the older I get, the harder it is for me to believe that education works in such a clean, linear way.
A school is more like infrastructure than destiny. It provides space, access, networks, pressure, deadlines, libraries, conversations, laboratories, silence, chaos, opportunities, and sometimes protection. But whether a person actually grows inside that environment depends heavily on what they do with those resources — and what invisible battles they are carrying while doing so.
Two students can sit in the same classroom and walk out with entirely different educations.
One memorizes enough to survive exams and forgets everything a month later. Another becomes obsessed with a single idea mentioned briefly in a lecture, then spends years reading around it independently. One finds confidence through peers. Another develops through loneliness. Some are shaped by a mentor. Others by heartbreak, failure, illness, migration, financial stress, or simply spending too many late nights questioning themselves.
A lot of real education happens outside formal teaching.
It happens in library corners after class. In conversations with friends walking home. In arguments. In boredom. In internet rabbit holes at 2am. In realizing your worldview is too simplistic after encountering someone radically different from you. In learning how to tolerate uncertainty instead of demanding perfect answers.
School can facilitate those moments, but it cannot manufacture them mechanically.
Ironically, some of the most intellectually alive people I’ve met were never fully obedient students. They used institutions strategically rather than worshipping them. They borrowed resources from school while building their own internal education elsewhere through books, communities, online archives, work experience, art, relationships, or simple curiosity.
And curiosity is probably the most unevenly distributed force in education.
You can force attendance. You can force assignments. You can even force short-term performance. But you cannot force genuine intellectual hunger. That part remains deeply personal.
Some people discover it early. Some discover it at forty. Some never do because survival leaves no room for exploration. Others were once curious but had it beaten out of them by systems obsessed with metrics, rankings, employability, and conformity.
Schools also teach an unofficial curriculum nobody openly writes down.
How hierarchy works. How people perform intelligence. How authority behaves under pressure. How group dynamics shape “truth.” How charisma can overpower substance. How confidence and competence are not always the same thing.
Sometimes education is not about becoming smarter. It is about becoming less naive.
And perhaps the most important thing school gave many of us was not knowledge itself, but proximity to other people during formative years. Peers become mirrors. Rivals. Collaborators. Emotional anchors. Warnings. Inspiration. Sometimes trauma too. Human beings develop relationally whether institutions admit it or not.
When I look back, I honestly cannot separate what I learned from “school” versus what I learned from the people I met there, the books I discovered accidentally, the internet forums I fell into, the failures I experienced privately, or the long periods of self-education nobody graded.
Even now, most meaningful learning in adult life remains self-directed.
Nobody forces people to read philosophy after work. Nobody forces someone to study investing, psychology, literature, filmmaking, coding, or history in their spare time. Nobody forces reflection after grief, burnout, or disappointment. At some point, education becomes inseparable from how seriously a person engages with their own life.
Maybe that’s why so many highly educated people still feel lost, while some people without elite credentials possess remarkable clarity, wisdom, adaptability, and emotional intelligence.
Institutions matter. Resources matter. Access matters enormously. But they are still tools — not substitutes for internal work.
A school can open doors. It cannot walk through them for you.