The absence of intellectual curiosity in the youth.

 I am exposed to the endless repetition of things I already know at school—not in the sense of lesson subjects, but in general knowledge—and I return just as I came. Why? Simply because it is compulsory. Yet the school, which to me consists of nothing but repetition, is mostly seen by my peers as a place where they can ask about what they do not yet know. The things I learned and made permanent in my memory through my own effort at the very beginning of my youth are things these people, who are about to enter adulthood, are only just beginning to learn—or rather, not even learning, but merely internalizing passively, like a plant absorbing water. This shows one thing: the absence of intellectual curiosity. Because they do not experience an intellectual hunger in their natural state, they are fated to ignorance, and no insight can be instilled in them; only their minds can be swollen with piles of useless theory—and that is precisely what is done under the guise of “education” in typical schools. Yet for someone that sees school as a place of learning, true learning becomes impossible; such people remain incapable even of knowing or intuiting the simplest things.