Fighting a Cold-Hearted Education System

Can you feel the difference between “being educated,” “having knowledge” and “having practical skills?” I remember when I was struggling to get a degree when I was a student and it became crystal clear to me that being educated has nothing to do with having valuable knowledge or having practical skills. As a student, I was spending plenty of time on gaining knowledge that I will never apply and learning things that I will never do in my life again. It was a big waste of time and I felt like I’m just standing still instead of moving forward. The knowledge I was getting at the college was outdated and had nothing to do with the real world and sincere strivings of my heart. I had no time to work on things that could really open my potential and instead I had to chase the false educational goals that broken, cold-hearted educational system has set before me.

The main reason why I carried on with studying was that I didn’t want to disappoint my parents, who thought that having a degree was very important and would have a very serious impact on my life. Constants stress, sleepless nights, no time for private life is the price that I have paid for getting that degree for my parents.

Let’s look at the inconsistency of modern educational systems. Students in almost all majors need to write essays. But in the end, these assignments turn out to be a waste of time which neither students nor professors need. But can you imagine – the final grading heavily depends on the marks that students get by writing these papers! People may say that they open up student’s creative side and writing skills. Well if I can agree with the latter, but I totally disagree with opening up the creative side. The structure and logic of essays are very rigid and your mark will get lower if you don’t follow it. That’s not the celebration of creativity, but on the contrary – it’s the celebration of mediocrity. But that’s the necessary part of “being educated”. Unfortunately it has nothing to do with being wise or having knowledge.

But what choice do students have? If they don’t comply with outdated educational agenda, they will simply be kicked out from the college. And I did what students were doing for decades to get my degree, but you know what? That old system is about to change. It served the interest of industrial revolution and was aimed to satisfy the demand of the market for standardized professions. Industrial revolution is over and new professions and specializations appear every year. Educational systems just can’t keep up with it! It’s not just students – teachers and professors hate it too! Just Google it and you will be surprised with the results.

What should be done about it? Let’s turn to some great and very spot-on ideas expressed by Elon Musk, genius Canadian-American entrepreneur, inventor, and engineer. He has 5 children and he started his own school for them. He also thinks that modern education is lame. There are three things which he thinks education should be about:

• It should be student-centric and match abilities of individuals, taking into consideration that every person is different.
• Students should solve problems, not learn subjects.
• Studying should be fun.

Knowing these problems, let’s change the educational system together!