It is important for us as humans to continuously gain knowledge and skills. It is said that without this we become uncivilized and in order to become civilized we need to become educated. Our current education system is not helping us reach these goals. Instead it’s getting us into debt, taking 4 to 5 years of our lives in tertiary education and putting us in a box of facts cutting our connection with creative thinking. So who in their right mind would dedicate themselves to this system? If this continues people will abandon the education system and we will be living in an uncivilized time. I fear this has begun even with those who have dedicated themselves to this system as the system failed to give them the knowledge and skills required to live in this world. So was the promise made by the establishment who encouraged us to follow this system in order to get better employment, gain knowledge and skills, and become more civilized kept. I fear not. The following paragraphs will explain in more detail.
Problems with the current education system globally (my opinion)…
The current education seems to lack the ability to train people for employment, financial management or dealing anything much in the real world. Therefore its purpose is not really to increase our knowledge or skills. The knowledge we think we gain is usually just us memorizing facts and not gaining a clear understanding of what we learn. This is what I believe causes the inability or difficulty faced by graduates to adapt to the working world and get a job related to what they studied in college.
Secondly is the time it takes to complete our education in order to be able to get a job and support ourselves has been getting longer with time. In the past once someone is done with school they could get employed and usually they would have a decent lifestyle, for example a postman could get a decent sized home during his lifetime and if someone needed to get skills or knowledge they could go to college, but back then they actually got those stuff from colleges and it didn’t take as long as it does currently. Of course inflation has a hand in it being easier for people to own decent homes and other things in the past compared to today.
I also think colleges’ today focus on examination, memorizing, presentation and debating. These things consume a lot of time and very little knowledge and skills are gained from them. The end result is students spend 4 to 5 years in college, are unable to earn a living and support themselves during this time, they’re broke, and they are financially preventing their parents to prepare for retirement because their parents are still supporting their adult child. I wonder why welfare has become a more important need for the people and retirement a dream that is difficult to achieve for most in the middle class today? I believe it is partly because of the problems mentioned in the previous sentences. When young people are placed in a system for 4 to 5 years and their unable to earn during this period, they have lost the ability to save money because it is in these early years we have the least amount of commitments. When parents need to support their adult children for an additional 4 to 5 years than usual they would not be prepared for retirement and they would need to depend on welfare which increases a country’s debt. I wonder why the world is in a debt crisis today? Why is it in the past the middle class did not face this problems? It is because back then when young people needed to earn they could earn and parents could then focus on financially preparing for retirement.
Thirdly the cost of education has been increasing due to inflation. This pushes a lot of young people into debt before they are even earning and it is not a small amount either. I have seen people in the US with US$ 90,000 of student debt. In my country you could get a decent sized house for that amount of money. How are these students going to be able to afford a home in their lifetime when they have a home sized debt before they are even earning? So now we have the student debt crisis in some countries in the west. So is inflation the cause of these debt problems faced by students for their education and countries for welfare? Well what causes inflation? DEBT! Debt devalues a currency and causes prices to up. Of course the current monetary system exists out of debt but that’s for another post another time.
So we have seen how the current education system with its domino effect causes several problems for the middle class. So who promoted the need for a tertiary education as a necessity for employment which is how people keep food on their table and a roof over their heads? The media right. Well the media consists of many profit based corporations, so anyone with enough money could pay them to say whatever they want but the problem is the media is able to shape our reality so much we have all been made to believe we need to spend 4 to 5 years of our youth and get into a huge amount of debt just to make a living. Who gains from this? Credit companies, colleges and media corporations of course.
There is nothing wrong with gaining skills and knowledge as it is how we improve ourselves for the future but the current education system is not only failing at providing that, but it is also having terrible effects on other parts of our lives. Furthermore knowledge and skills can also be gained by experience via employment or other productive activities.
All of these issues in the long run affect the productivity of a country as there will be a high supply of people without skills and knowledge to produce anything, demanding high paying jobs for their College Degrees in order to pay off their debt. It would not be profitable for companies to open businesses in these countries and they will move to other places reducing the employment opportunities for people in that country.
So what is the solution? Knowledge/Skill Gaining Education System
This system would need to be cheap enough for people not to get into debt to use it, its time period to complete should be shortened to 1 to 2 years and it should produce people with the skills and knowledge they have been promised to gain. My solution is online tutoring, removal of exams, and more hands on projects to help students gain the skills they need and they could be tested based on the result of the projects. Debating is another thing I would remove because it is a useless skill compared to the listening, negotiating and asking skills. Of course presentation skills would still be needed but I think this could be gained during the presentation of the projects. Currently presentation skills require a separate subject which is redundant.
Lastly I hope we can overcome these problems with cooperation. We have seen the world enter the debt crisis and although it is not that bad in my country yet, but I fear we are heading in the same direction as many countries with a debt crisis.
We should solve this for all of us and for the future of our children and grandchildren.
I will try to get all of this information into images for my next post to make it easier to understand. See you then.