Growing up homeschooled, I noticed something.

Whenever I asked my fellow homeschool friends this question of “what have you been up to?” It would usually go something like: “Well, I’ve been building a fort in the woods behind our house, I built this sweet lego ship, I’ve done school, and I went to my grandparents all day Tuesday to help them with some yard work.” They might not say it so succinctly. But these were the kinds of things they said they did.

Now, when I asked my public school friends the same question, the response usually went something like: “I’ve been practicing for my band concert on Saturday, I’ve got a big science fair coming up next weekend, and I’ve been playing basketball pretty much every night.”

Notice anything different about the two?

Almost any time I asked one of my public schooled friends what they’ve been doing, they would never say school. This seemed odd since they were almost for sure spending more time every day on it than my homeschool friends.

But I came to realize, that was the exact reason they never mentioned it.

School had become such a part of their life that it was no longer part of their life, it was their life. Almost everything they did centered around school. There was no thought of it being just another activity that they added to each day for learning. The day was school and they simply added things to the school.

Think about it. If someone asks you what you’ve been doing, you would never say, “well, I’ve been breathing quite a bit and I’ve also been getting into sleeping.” That would be silly. Those things are just part of your life. You don’t feel it necessary to mention them because obviously everyone already understands that that’s what you do each day. This is how I understood my public school friends thinking to go.

There was no reason to mention that they’ve been doing school because that was so obvious it would be silly to mention it.

When you get to the point that education is just a pattern and not a deliberate choice to learn more about things that interest you, it is no longer serving the purpose of education.

The education system in America has perhaps become the best hypnotizing trick in the history of the world. Millions upon millions of people going through it, never even knowing that they are allowed to ask the question:

“Why are we doing this?”