I am not an educated man.
Yes, I completed my studies in grade school, high school, and I graduated from college with a degree in some fancy school, though I would argue that the school was not really that fancy. It was more of a name school than anything, although I cherish the university deeply.
What I do have, however, is an opinion on education. Everyone is entitled to that, whatever kind of education they have. Whatever success I have had in my life, and of course I dream of further things, is not because of my schooling. It wasn’t a hindrance, but it also wasn’t something that helped a lot.
I always tell people this - the greatest lessons I ever learned were learned by simply doing. I don’t think I am a particularly intelligent person. I used to think so, but I’ve since dropped that part of my ego. However, I am a quick learner. I learned how to create things by actually creating them, not through listening to teachers who half-ass themselves on their lectures. Lord knows everyone knows the kind of teachers I’m talking about. The ones who throw up some bulleted powerpoint, read off of it, and then quiz you on that bullshit.
Is that supposed to represent an education? I feel as though that is 90% of the curriculum in even the most “prestigious” schools. And yes, as much as I hate to admit it, my opinion on this is not entirely without merit. I was in an honours class in high school, and an honours course in college, meaning top ~10%. Those things don’t matter though.
Maybe it was just my course, but I’ve talked to countless people who have felt the same. They, like me, remember and take into the “real world” very little of their formal education. Those with supposedly more difficult courses. Those with supposedly easier courses. Those who even dropped out.
The problem with society in my eyes is that we view graduating from these courses as some sort of signification that one is “smarter,” whatever the hell that means. We glance over resumes that don’t have the right school or course. We promote and hire people who complete higher education automatically.
That’s not to say that people who complete higher education (especially past university) are not intelligent or hardworking. On the contrary, I do believe that it takes an immense amount of effort and brains to complete these studies. It’s tough.
My issue lay in the way we view education as a whole. Our society automatically assumes that once one has graduated from a certain university or course, that they are on some sort of higher plane than the rest of the planet. My issue is that we, as a society, don’t look at what these people learned from their schooling - which can often be invaluable - but that we look at the check mark that says, “yes I graduated from X school with a Y degree/masters/completion from Z course.”
We don’t look at what these people actually learned. We just look at the fancy degree, from the impressive course, and think, “ok, these people are qualified.” We skip over what these people actually learned in school and just look at where they graduated from.
It’s a systemic, self-fulfilling disease. We don’t hire or work with people because they don’t have the “proper” credentials. And so people feel the need to go and spend untold thousands of dollars to get the credentials, because they know they won’t be hired without them. And it goes on and on, like a feedback loop.
But there are so many incredibly brilliant people who have never even reached higher education, much less finished grade school. There are so many bright minds in the world, with the work ethic to back it, that are infinitely more qualified. We ignore them, and we force them into a system where education is a necessity to succeed, not an asset to help succeed.
Maybe I’m just disillusioned by the whole system, but I’ve asked many people this and they agree with me: the things they most remember and take with them from their schooling are the courses on the humanities. How to socialise with people. How to look at a problem and try to solve it. How to be a good person. I’m sure that most of the people reading this have forgotten all those irritating Powerpoints.
Isn’t that what school is all about: actually learning so that we can do our work better? When did it become more about the brand name than the actual things being taught? I wish I could go back in time and tell all my peers that, no you don’t need a degree from a fancy school to show the world how brilliant you are. Your light can shine upon the world regardless of whether or not you have an off-white piece of rolled up paper. I wish I could tell my friends, and have them not be so jaded about everything.
Actually… you know what… why wish when I can just say it: we ought to go to school to learn, not just to prove that we are capable of learning.