Why You Should Skip Class: Group Conformity

“I took the other road, all right, but only because it was the easy road for me, the way I wanted to go. If I've encountered some unnecessary resistance that's because most of the traffic is going the other way.” ― Edward Abbey

When I was young, I'd always listen to what adults told me to do because I had a strong belief that they knew best. But as I grew up, I learned about the people who changed the world and more often than not, they were those who would take risks and challenge the status quo. The way we do a lot of things in society is usually built upon the prior experience of those before us, and no doubt, there is an obvious merit to this. But is the status quo really the best way? Should we blindly settle with what worked fine in the past?

In thinking about learning, we need to put these questions into perspective. Sure, we can do what our institutions tell us and go to class, do the readings, and be a "good" student. But who's to say that we've reached the best methodology? Education has always been evolving, and one thing that hold us back is group conformity. The Asch Experiment is an illustration of how easy it is for us to settle down with what people tell us is the "right" way of doing things even if we might know otherwise.