Why does standardized education feel like a waste of time to some parents / people? People that do well in school tend to do better in life if we measure by income and access to things like quality insurance. I think that if people are not satisfied with their life, it would make sense to blame an activity as lengthy as education, among other factors. After all, we spend over a decade in the education system in exchange for a high school degree. In any case, I think a happy life can be achieved with very little, so for the people described above – unfortunately they lack material gain as well as personal satisfaction in daily activities.
To state the obvious, school is not a requirement for success – unless you are specifically seeking success in a field that requires education such as being a lawyer or doctor. The most common counter argument I hear to the value of a standardized education is that you can be quite financially stable even without a high school or college degree. People even say so with some amount of pride. Look at me. I did all of this without education. Okay, cool. Even those people develop expertise in what they do – meaning knowledge is important everywhere. There is such a thing as being a better plumber, carpenter or any other tradesman etc. than someone who is inferior. The reality is that a person can attend school for so many years and for lack of attention pick up only a meager amount of knowledge – most of it not immediately obvious how to apply to real life.
They should have taught me how to file taxes.
They should have taught me how to open a bank account.
Things like this can be approached with a couple of Google searches. Also, I think people make small complaints such as these when they actually refer to a larger more complex frustration, so it is difficult to address them as a fix.
What you learn in standardized education I agree is not all that useful sometimes, but that does not make it useless. The reason for learning useless things is learning itself – the process of figuring out something that was previously unknown. The process you can reuse even if you never care to talk about some ancient history or obscure novel a second time in your life. Also, through diversity of teachings one may discover an interest or passion that would otherwise stay hidden. All information is connected, so knowing abstract concepts can help in brainstorming practical solutions to more relevant problems.
Strictly speaking from a capitalist point of view, a standardized education is an efficient tool for providing labor that has a certain level of proficiency. Until robots automate most unskilled jobs, someone has to man cash registers and the like. The cool thing, though, is that you can use the education intended to slot you in society as a way to actually move elsewhere if that’s what you want. Especially in the modern world, competitive advantages are created from what you know vs. what you can do.
I touched on a variety of thoughts, but I’ll try to end in a practical way. School systems are not always great (some even are bad), but whatever issues the education system carries the following is true:
- It is better that we have education and a system to provide the same basic principles to all people than to not have one
- Knowledge remains important in all aspects of life, even if standard education is inefficient at providing knowledge
Stay in School...
Copyright © 2020 Erick Meza
