# education

    Supermarket Scams (and how that relates to education)

    Why is it that when we plan to buy 2 items, we come back with 6?

    That, our supposed 10 min trip has turned into 30?

    This is exactly what supermarkets HI FIVE over. Each aisle oozes with careful planning and strategy, with dedicated teams calculating “We should put this item in this aisle, so they can spend longer walking through the store”.

    So what are these scams?

    1. Starting with the vegetable n fruit aisles
      • You start on a good streak, which validates purchasing unhealthy food later on in your shop
      • Leads to decision fatigue. Sorting through good broccoli from bad ones is TOUGH work
    2. Essential products like dairy are far away in inconvenient locations
      • They know you’ll buy your milk, butter etc, so they’ll put it further away so you’ll walk past differe- “OH chocolate!”
    3. Most expensive products are at eye level
      • nuff said
    4. Each cashier finishes off with ‘cheap’ snacks.
      • Since you’ve spent so long shopping, you deserve a treat

    So onto my real message:

    The education system is a supermarket. Like a customer wandering aimlessly, buying products they don’t need but looked shiny, a student applies for a university degree with no idea what they even want to do.

    People don’t know what they’re signing up for, and the way school’s structured is not to help the student, but the business itself. Likewise, supermarkets don’t care about customers wants and needs, unless it coincides with profit.

    So… we have students in aged-based classes, rote memorising content who aren’t encouraged to think for themselves. Learning material, tests, grading are all standardised, and students barely have time for creative work and projects just for the fun of it.

    Education might be the biggest scam of all, promising a quality future when the future is changing so quickly that our system will soon be redundant. As Alvin Toffler writes:

    “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

    Creativity, innovation, introspection, critical thinking are in.

    Standardisation, compliance, rote-memorisation… definitely out.

    Jo