When I was a teenager, some time shortly after the end of the Bronze Age, a friend of mine commented that I've never had an original thought in my life. In the intervening years, I've come to realize that he was right. We may come across new insights on our own, but the odds that no one ever thought of them before are slim.

To wit: As I've said before, the goal of K-12 education is not to educate, but to produce good little consumer sheep.

The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.
H. L. Mencken