The pinnacle of conformity

I know that I'm sounding like a broken record, but there is no doubt in my mind that we are living in the most mindless conformist era in history. The schools are at the heart of the problem. Success in school demands conformity.


When it comes to grades, being able to form your own thoughts is completely worthless. The schools instead try to ensure that students come up with the "right" answers. Sometimes, these answers are legitimately correct. Other times, these answers are matters of opinions. There are even occasions when the "right" answer is wrong.

Conformity is one of the key elements of grades. To succeed in school, you must conform. You must think what your teachers tell you to think. In a sense, you could argue that schooling measures your willingness to conform.

People do not graduate high school because of individual strength. They graduate because they are willing to sacrifice themselves in order to fit the rigid mold provided by the schools. The same could be said for college.

I have admitted to graduating high school. Does this make me a conformist? To an extent, I have to say yes. The difference between me and most graduates is that I started to resist. I didn't resist as much as I should have, but it was enough to earn my mindless drone certification.

If I would have pursued my individual strengths as I should have, I never would have graduated. Going back to my years as a doormat for my teachers, I had nearly a 4.0 GPA. My grades reflected how willing I was to conform.

Although I have managed to maintain a degree of individuality, I have been tainted. What I have left of individuality, I tend to hide when around others. Publicly, I am a conformist. It's only at home that I have enough sense to deviate from the mindless masses.

What I'm trying to get at right now is that the degree of conformity can be variable. People who embrace conformity the most are generally the best students. People who want to become the best individuals that they can be are certain to fail. This means that college is for conformists only.

I can go even further. Take a look at Harvard. I hear a lot about the prestige and age of that school. Do you know something that I have never heard about Harvard? I have never heard that there's anything legitimately good about that college. Despite that, people want to attend Harvard. This is primarily due to their prestige. They hear others holding Harvard in such high esteem that they ultimately allow others to make the decision for them. Combine that with the heavy conformity demands of schooling, and graduating Harvard could very well be the pinnacle of conformity. Their graduates out-conform everyone else.