"School na scam" is probably one of the most dangerous sentences circulating the internet right now, and nobody is treating it with the seriousness it deserves.
I get where it came from, people watched graduates struggle to find jobs, watched dropouts build empires, watched influencers flaunt cash they made without ever sitting in a classroom and someone said it out loud, School na scam, and just like that, a whole generation had a phrase to hang their frustration on, the problem is, a phrase that starts as frustration quickly becomes a belief, and a belief shapes decisions real, life altering decisions.
I met a small boy recently who told me flat out that he doesn't want to go to school, he wants to learn to cut hair, He wants to make money, and honestly? I wasn't even angry at him. I was angry at the adults and the content he would been consuming that made him feel like school was the enemy of success, he is a child, he does not know what he doesn't know yet, he doesn't know that the barbing salon he admires probably has someone managing it is accounts, someone who negotiated the lease, someone who understands basic business enough to keep it running, He doesn't know that learning formal or not is the foundation underneath everything.
That is the real trick of "school na scam." It doesn't just discourage education, It discourages the patience that education teaches, The ability to sit with something hard, the discipline of showing up even when it is not immediately rewarding, the long game, and these are the same qualities that actually build the kind of success people are chasing when they decide to skip school.
I'm not here to say school is perfect. It isn't, the system has real problems outdated curriculums, poor funding, teachers who are stretched thin, certificates that sometimes don't translate to opportunities, those are valid conversations, but there is a massive difference between "this system needs fixing" and "this system is worthless, don't bother." One is a critique, the other is a trap.
When I am around younger people who've swallowed this mindset, I try not to lecture them directly that rarely works, what I do instead is ask questions, What is your plan? How does that work? Who do you know that is doing it and what does their actual life look like? I try to get them thinking rather than just believing, because the antidote to a catchy lie isn't a long speech it is curiosity.
For myself, I resist it by staying honest about what I actually know versus what I have just heard, it is easy to repeat something that sounds smart, It is harder to sit with complexity and resist the urge to simplify everything into a slogan.
"School na scam" is a slogan, And slogans, no matter how catchy, have never built anything worth keeping.
[Image Is Mine]