The other day I was watching a TV show on the Da Vinci Code. Basically the premise was that many churches had been laid out across the land in a pattern resembling a pentagram. Essentially the gist of the show was that a man had noticed a pattern and the resident expert denied that the pattern existed. The expert said that you could find any pattern you want if you looked hard enough for it. Now while I agree with that statement, it doesn’t mean that the pattern doesn’t exist or that the pattern is merely coincidence.

Until I had watched the movie the Da Vinci code, I had always associated the inverted pentagram with devil worship. That movie presented the pentagram as a symbol of nature. So it makes sense that the church would see any symbol that was non-church affiliated to be related to the devil.

The expert refused to believe in the possibility that an ancient people, or even people who came 500 years before us might possibly have the ability to position church landmarks with any degree of precision.

Where does this arrogance come from? Just because an ancient people didn’t have some of the mechanical conveniences that we take for granted today, doesn’t mean they were less intelligent as a whole. In fact, they were probably more intelligent back then than we are now as knowledge and trade skills were far more valued than they are now.

We tend to think that people who work with their hands are less intelligent than people who work with their brains. I think that this is simply not the case. Most people don’t have motor based work skills because nowadays, everyone is working on a computer. So if knowing how to work a computer is the zenith of all knowledge, where are the new Shakespeares or the Michelangelos? By all rights, with better tools we should be smarter as a people, right?

If ancient people were given some of the tools we take for granted today, they would produce far more sophisticated work and more of it. Not many people really investigate the process of creation. We often don’t think of increasing efficiency because we think we’re already at our peak efficiency.

Ancient people built walls with rocks and no mortar. They constructed the pyramids. They did all this without the modern conventional tools of cranes or Catepillars. In the past, people were more creative because they HAD to be. They had to find innovative ways to solve problems.

Schools today don’t really teach problem solving. They still teach pointless memorization, which in the age of Google, becomes less and less important. To train to rattle off a series of facts and then promptly forget that information after testing is impractical.

Kids these days idolize the Britney’s, and the Jessica’s. And for what? They’re not smart, nor are they excessively talented. They’re just pretty to look at. That’s what we’re teaching our kids to aspire to. No kid aspires to be the next Einstein or Hawking, because they believe it’s simply out of their reach.

I’m of the opinion, that college is becoming less and less relevant. Based on what I’ve seen of students, I don’t think high school education is improving. I’ve seen how crowded big state schools can be. What is more important is to have an understanding of how money works and how to make money. And to learn this, you don’t need college.

I won’t force my kids to attend college. If they go it’s because they choose to go rather than the idea that a college education will guarantee their future. For them college will be optional.

The wife and I are considering the idea of homeschooling our children. Everyday, there are ridiculous stories on the news about high schools. If it’s not a pervert in the classroom, it’s a kid with a gun, or a blind faith to zero tolerance behavior policies which completely disregard common sense. Education, and the quality of it, are nowhere to be discussed, except for when the state fails to meet basic educational requirements.

I want to give my kids the advantages that I see being squandered by high school kids and my college students.

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