the zurkie show - why did school make us dumb

Episode Date: November 26, 2025

we have to take back our education.it starts by individually learning and sharing the things we love.sending you all lots of love and peaaaaaaaace!https://linktr.ee/thezurkieshow

I feel immensely undereducated on so many different topics. I grew up in the United States. I went to school in the U.S. public school system. And although we went through history, I can't tell you the dates, the most important dates of the U.S. Constitution, let alone like the Bill of Rights, all of these things. They were on the test and then I forgot it. I can't tell you what a rock is made of,

like what kind of materials build up a mountain, And even though it was on the test, I just, I don't remember anymore because I had to memorize it and it was gone. Learning has been corrupted. And it is such a sad thing that now it's on you as an adult to figure out literally everything about the world because it was not taught to you in a way for you to remember it. Now, you can point your finger at the teachers and be like it's their fault. But high key, the teachers are just doing their job. and the teachers already don't get paid anything for having to, A, teach people, right, teach the kids, and B, discipline the kids. I think that this is a big problem.

And I think it's leading to a lot of bad decision making, not amongst just young people, but just people who have gone through the same system over and over and over again. and no matter who I talk to, it just, the incentive to learn is gone. The incentive to learn is gone. There's no incentive because you have all of the distractions available to you for anything, and you have all the information available to you for anything, which is a blessing, don't get me wrong,

but it's also a curse. I want to be able to tell you how many miles the Concord flies. I want to be able to tell you, like, I don't know, the year that Poland was founded. I want to be able to remember these things, but my memory was used to up the scores of a school so that they would receive more funding and more people would bring their tax dollars

and put it into the school so they could pay their teachers of livable salary. I wish I could tell you, like, what I learned in college, but I literally can't. Most of my learning had to come from outside the classroom. I can tell you vividly in detail all the tutorials I watched for the things that I was interested in and all the video essays that I consumed for stuff that interests me. But everything else, like this baseline feeling of knowledge in my brain is gone.

It's gone. I don't have it. It's never too early to plan your summer story in Europe with WestJet, from rolling countryside to cobblestone streets. Begin your next chapter. Book your seat at westjet.com. or call your travel agent, WestJet, where your story takes off. Do people who are older than us have this? It's something that I've wrestled with my entire life,

because I can talk to my grandparents about literally everything, and they know about literally everything. But that's not all older folks are created equal. I'm sure you know plenty of people that are like, not in my backyard. I ain't learning about that. I know how to drive my truck and my tractor. And that's, you know what, they've lived their life,

and they're doing good. but they could probably tell you everything there is to, you know, about farming. If there's something that they need to grow, oh my goodness, that's your guy. Got soft hands, brother. I've got soft hands, okay? I've got soft hands. And I've also got a soft brain. I have a smooth brain and I want it to like, I don't know.

I want to learn more. I want to have this craving for knowledge. and I've been saying that but there's another thing that's very dangerous when you become an adult it's your work life balance there isn't much time to learn except for the things that pertain to your job which for most of us is a joke anyways

it's it's a joke it's adult daycare and it kind of it's funny that I can reference like a bunch of different memes like I know about my name Jeff and I know about Dax Flame and I know about like you know I can go through brain rod and six seven but it kind of is criminal that i cannot even think about simple historical facts about the country that i grew up in about my lineage about like why the sky is blue

i don't know off the top of my head yeah i mean there's a search engine that knows but why do i not know that or am i crazy do you feel this way or is it just me that is like i want to know more about whatever. I feel like I don't have a base level of operative knowledge for a human being. But then again, I'm knowledgeable in other things. I know lore about musicians and about eras of music. You know, I can talk your ear off about daft punk. And maybe there's a, there's a reality where these things don't really matter that much because we don't interact with them on a day-to-day basis. But what if there is a situation where you need this knowledge. Think about a situation where you do not have a connection. If you don't know how to

read a map, you're screwed. You're royally screwed. And that kind of scares me a little bit of how reliant we've become on just like, you just look it up, bro. There's a way to just look it up. But I don't know. Like, it's common, maybe. And also the fact that it's so easy to just like see something that you, you know, consume and just be like, that's fact without checking it. There's not an incentive to actually double-check these things because it's like it just takes too much work and that is kind of a scary thing too. It makes me wonder, was it done by design?

Doon, dun, doon, doon, doon, doon, doon, do do do, do you know? I can sing among us, I can't sing you Mozart. And maybe there's, you know, doesn't matter really. I don't know, I mean, maybe, but like, I think it does. I think it does matter. Because we have history for a reason. And it's supposed to teach us lessons.

But if nobody learns history and nobody cares, we will repeat the same mistakes we made in the past and we will continue to do it. We're already doing it. Brough. So read, read. Talk to old people. If your dad was a carpenter, still is. Go into a shop and ask how he makes stuff.

If your dad cooks Wazanki, a Polish specialty dish with bacon and macaroni, like shadow him and ask how he makes his stuff and asks how he boils his cabbage. Curiosity needs to transcend finding the origin of a sample for a tight beat that you like. It needs to be more human maybe. we need to take it upon ourselves to become more knowledgeable about things. And to learn from each other, and I think it comes from realizing first that you want to learn. That learning isn't a bad thing, that it doesn't mean that you have to sit down and do homework to learn.

Actually, homework is like the most, oh my goodness, it's just like, why? Why? To memorize. Okay, that's great. But like, you're going to need to memorize. things when you're actively working on something or a project. Times are changing and I just like, I just want you to know that you are not dumb because you feel like you don't have knowledge.

You're actually very, very smart and intelligent that you're recognizing that you're like, dude, I don't know anything. That is a good sign. And your willingness to be like, okay, I want to figure things out. I want to learn about stuff is a great thing. And you need to follow that. You need to follow that passion and that burning desire to get into like a studio and and start recording people for free. You need to follow that desire to like learn about obscure history about the, you know, a couple days ago I was talking with a with a homie.

And we were talking about the Hussarians with the wings, the Polish Hussarians. Do you guys what I'm talking about? Hussarians? I hope I'm pronouncing it correctly. Like learn about these things. it has become cool to be dumb. Or maybe it always was. What?

Maybe it always was. Like, maybe smart people were not the people with aura. And in today's day and age, that's kind of what matters, no? Like, if you have aura, like, dang, you got, oh, man, pro. I'm trying to be like you. I don't think that's the answer. I don't know. It just scares me is what it, what it does.

it scares me that people are incompetent and it's not on a level of like have you ever talked to like a really a really what is the word condescending like film bro or music bro they're always film or music I can't believe that people listen to something

other than Dejauna McGee like do you have more than one brain cell? I mean have you even like have you watched all of the Tarantino films I don't think you have like dude relax bro as much as I love Tarantino films I love like watching Matilda. Alright? Like, bro, like, relax.

Oh my goodness. And the same thing with like Dijon, man, and McGee. I love Dijon. I went to a Dijon concert. But the amount of people that were just there to like look at the stage and be like, yeah, yeah, that's very, that's, uh, that's yeah, the way that he's doing it's so deconstructed and the sound is like, enjoy the concert.

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Welcome aboard via rail. Please sit and enjoy. Please sit and stretch. Steep. Flip. or that and enjoy via rail love the way yeah you know what i just got i got some experiences of people like talking to me like i'm an idiot and that i don't know about uh two star in the dream police i'm like bro i've listened to that album 50 times but i don't go around telling everyone how

amazing it is especially after i say yeah i've listened to it's great man yeah it's just like no relax like come on do not nerd out no no nerding out we're done bro no like it's actually such a virus that I'm seeing over and over again is this like building your entire

personality around something that you think you know better than other people and instead of just enjoying the thing and like trying to find common ground on like enjoying stuff you you think of yourself as higher that's another thing I think that happened with being educated is people thought of themselves as better than other people that didn't understand things. And that happens, that was a common thing that happened to me at school.

I don't know if this happened to you guys. But like, dude, some of the smart, smart, like, people that were going to Ivy League schools were, like, trash human beings. I'm, oh, that sucks for me to say, not everyone. But there were people that their entire identity was just rooted in the fact that they were going to a Yale. And, oh, you don't understand Calgary. Yeah, I didn't think you would. I mean, it's duh, like it's obviously the integral. It's like, dude, I don't get it.

And am I, maybe if we're using intelligence as a comparison, then yeah, maybe I am dumber than you, but that is just such a, I think it's a criminal way of using intelligence because everyone is, everyone is going to be better at different things. Like we're not all going to be the same in terms of understanding. And maybe that's another thing. I'm kind of coming to a, you know, concluding. to it's like maybe we're we're just meant to have different understandings of the world and we're meant to not have the same baseline knowledge and that's okay so that kind of throws my entire

point out the window but I still think it's good to know baseline facts and have like a common ground of fact of things that happened factos you know but we've kind of gate kept being smart and being intelligent and researching things and like actually being invests into history into older things is seen as like not as valuable as like keeping you know up to tabs on what's the what's the new bit what's the new troll what's the new trend and I'm not meant I don't want to sound like an old head that stuff is important like I think I think that that is culture now and we can't just sit there and be like bro like you know this is so mid like we kind of have to accept it. It's not going to go away. But now the question is, how can we, like,

elevate, like elevate the taste of culture? That sounds kind of cringe. Honestly, no, no, no. What I'm trying to say is, how do we just feel intelligent and feel good about knowing things? That's what I'm trying to say. It's not about everyone needs to be smarter. Like, it's more about, how do you feel like, okay, you know, you're humble enough to recognize that you don't know anything, and you are curious and driven enough to learn and seek out knowledge as an adult, because this is something that we got to change for, like, Gen Alpha, because giving them all iPads is not the meta, dude. I mean, Cocoa Mellon is great, but that's, that's, these are people you're going to be hiring in the future or working alongside. You really,

do you want them to just be like, like, Cocoa Mellon on one screen and the grind on the other? I mean, maybe, you know, hey, respect, you know. I don't know. I don't know. You know, I'm just sick of being complacent with not knowing. Or it's not even about knowing because I will never know everything about the world. It's probably for the better. But man, I just, I just want to be able to, like, tell my kid the history of a place. hey this is like I grew up in this city in Chicago and this is what you know redlining

is and the reason why neighborhoods are split in these you know very segregated ways and this is where this food comes from and this is where you know Polish people immigrated to this is where you know the Chicago fire went you know oh in 45 games you know I just want to have more lore

I want to have more life lore I want to actually feel like man I know about the world and I know simple things. Because right now, I don't know. And I've stopped trying to act like I know and I just say I don't know. And if somebody knows more than I do, I shut my mouth and I listen. And maybe that's the meta. We just got to listen more.

We got to read more. We got to hold each other accountable of, like getting people interested into things and sharing knowledge. I'll leave you guys off on this, on this foot here. I was at a burger place the other day with my parents and there was this group of like, I think college kids that were sitting down and they were talking about skiing and hanging out. And one of them was mentioning like something about the, I think it was either the Missouri

or Mississippi River about a bunch of, like a huge logging. There was, there was, back, a long time ago, a bunch of logs got caught in the river, and it basically started to mess up the flow of the river where water wasn't going through. And he was explaining this in such a passionate and cool way. I couldn't help but tune out of my conversation with my parents, which wasn't even a conversation because we were gobbling up burgers,

but I just couldn't help but listen to him speak about this lore that he knew. I might not never, like, I might never use that in my entire life. But it inspired me to learn about something, a fact, an event that happened where I'm from. And I think that's maybe what we need more of, is people just showing up, spreading positivity, spreading a good message, talking about things that they have researched in depth and giving them the attention they deserve. some food for thought zirky show don't think about it's not that deep bro it's literally not that deep when it literally is because it's the future of our world um man i love you guys so much thank you for listening to this these are just some thoughts i've been having recently and i just need i needed to like and if you disagree with me if you think like no like society is pretty dope like we're all

really really you know smart tell me tell me please i i would love to hear your opinion and your perspective. Today's episode of the Zerky Show is filmed in beautiful Cripple Creek in the mountains. It is a wonderful magical place in Colorado. Come visit. Did you know that the Zerky Show is everywhere you go? That is correct. You can watch. You can scroll it. You can stream it. The choice is if you want to tap in. These are the best ways to tap in. Do the things that bring you joy. Run some metas for me. Okay. If you know what a meta is, it's essentially like a life hack. If you remember life hack, like top 10 life hack videos, find a shortcut to what you're doing

that makes you work smarter, not harder. That's what I'm going to say. If you're trying something new, just know that I believe in you. And as always, Zerky Show, I am sending you lots of love. And peace!