I listened to Rush Limbaugh a little bit the other day, and he launched into a very interesting monologue.  Forget whether you like or dislike Rush.  Let’s throw politics aside for a moment and focus on what he said.  I think it’s a heavy indictment of this country’s school system.

Rush’s Monologue

“My dad was hell-bent on getting me to go to college.  I wanted no part of it.  I hated school from the second grade.  I have never been a conformist, and I hated being part of a giant little ant farm made up of human beings.  School to me was prison. . . . I had to do what I thought were stupid things.  I had to learn to paste in the second grade . . . . I hated paste. . . . I hated that I had to do all this stuff.  I hated being told what I had to do . . . . 

“But my parents said, ‘You gotta go to college.’ . . . Said, ’Son, it’s the only way you’re going to stand a chance in this world is to get an education.’  I said, ‘Dad, isn’t it true that what I really need is a degree to show somebody that I have supposedly been educated?’  ‘No, son, you need to get educated.’ . . . 

“Nothing wrong with it.  But I didn’t want to.  I already knew what I wanted to do. . . . I’ve been fired seven or eight times.  And the first job I ever had was shining shoes in a barbershop when I was 13.  I think I made 50 bucks in three months, and then when I first started radio when I was 16, I got 75 cents an hour. . . . After whatever number of years of devoted dedication to my desires, look what finally happened.”

Is School a Prison?

Some of you might think that Rush was just a brat, hated school, didn’t want to do school work, and was a loser for a while before getting lucky with his talk radio success.  I see it differently.  I think he touched on a severe problem with how people in this country are educated.1schoolgirlblackboard1.jpg

School teaches us that we need to get an education in order to get a good job and survive.  In other words, it teaches us to work for money.  Applying that mentality in our lives supposedly ensures success. 

But that isn’t true.  This process simply makes us work hard for money . . . for the rest of our lives.  It leads to me sitting in my office for 10-12 hours a day working on building someone else’s business.  I work, and the Man pays me money.  If I stop working, my income stops.  To phrase it another way, I am chained to this desk and to this job.  School may not be a prison, but it puts you on a path towards one. 

Why Does School Imprison You?

School hinders us because the typical curriculum does not contain courses that instill in us the tools we need for financial success.  By that, I mean tools related to financial education.  Individuals like Rush, Bill Gates, and many Internet millionaires today succeeded without a formal college education.  The tools they used to achieve wealth weren’t in school.  They were either innate, or they learned them elsewhere. 

Does that mean you should drop out of school or ditch your education and quit your job?  Absolutely not.  My point is that the education an individual needs to achieve wealth and financial freedom can’t be found in a formal education.

What Are These Tools?

I thought long and hard about the lessons and tools schools failed to teach us.  I’m compiling a list of these items, and I’m going to post this list tomorrow.  It’s a fascinating exercise, and I think this list will reveal why we have so many people today drowning in debt and searching for money.

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