Education as a Prison

While reading last weeks articles I became very interested in the idea that education is seen to be some kind of prison for the mind.  I had heard of this concept before but never really payed much attention until this particular article by Mckenzie Wark titled "A Hacker Manifesto".  He discusses the idea that education is slavery for the mind.  He believes it is how the ruling and powerful class instills their ideologies and class power.  This is why education is seen to be so important to the ruling class, because it teaches society the "proper" way to act and think.  It is a group of powerful people who decide what education will be taught and inevitably what knowledge we will learn and live by.

Wark goes on to discuss his believes that education is not knowledge but it is the organization of knowledge by elites.  This is where I start to disagree with Wark, education for me is knowledge.  Perhaps, when you are much younger in elementary school I can see the idea of education being a prison but I completely disagree when compared to university.  In elementary school everyone takes the same classes and are thought basically the same things.  This could be related to Wark's idea of education as slavery, but in university and college the vast majority of people are taking different subjects and are learning different ideas.  For me this does not represent a form of slavery of prison for a university student.  There are many different types of classes we can study and it is our own personal choice which one we decided to focus on.  

How does a person know what they what to study and learn about if they don't take part in some kind of education.  I think education is goes hand-in-hand with knowledge and discovering what you are really interested in.  I could not imagine what I would be doing with my life if not for education and the knowledge it has given me.  

I would love to hear what the rest of class has to say about the education as a prison.