In contemporary times, almost as a cultural practice, education has been elevated to the level of a rite of passage into the modern world. With the help of formal educational training, people acquire the skills of reading and writing. It is obvious that literacy, the ability to read and write, has become a requirement to meet many challenges of modern times. As a strategy to ensure that no child is denied the opportunity to acquire a formal education, not sending a child to school is a criminal offense in some parts of the world, especially in the West. Furthermore, some governments help their citizens acquire formal education either by subsidizing the cost or by making it available free of charge (at least at the basic level).
It is impossible to adapt to modern times if one does not go to school. Consequently, education is a necessity, not a luxury. People’s attitude towards education in contemporary times seems to suggest, in fidelity to Platonism, that it is better not to be born than to be uneducated. It is indisputable that the demand for education in different parts of the world is increasing day by day. People make numerous sacrifices to acquire education. Parents are willing to give everything they have for their children to finish school. Some people travel to foreign countries to acquire quality educational training. Acquiring a formal education has become one of the biggest priorities in today’s life.
However, despite the wide acceptance that formal education has gained throughout the world, one of the most significant questions about education that is often not asked is: “What is the relevance of education for practical life? ?” In other words, to what extent is education useful in addressing the challenges of practical life? This question must be asked because the expected impacts of education are absent in the lives of many educated people. One of the factors that speaks very eloquently about this is that education has been continually unable to improve the standard of living of numerous graduates.
It is imperative to point out that education is a means to an end, but not an end in itself. The implication of this is that education is a process that leads to the making of a product. The process is incomplete without the product. It is the product that gives value to the media. The quality of the process can be inferred from the quality of the product. As a means, education is incomplete without the end of the process. This end is the purpose that it (education) is designed to serve (in an ideal situation). Let us justify our claim that the expected impacts of education are absent in the lives of many educated people by examining a very sensitive aspect of educated people’s lives, their finances.
How many educated people are truly financially successful? Most graduates struggle their entire lives to make ends meet, but to no avail. There are numerous people who graduated from tertiary institutions (even at the top of the class), but who rank well below many people with lower educational backgrounds (academic intelligence and academic ability) than their own on the scale of success. financial. Perhaps, financial struggles and crises are worse among educated people. Most educated people struggle through their working years simply to make ends meet, to no avail, and end up as liabilities in retirement.
The inability of education to help graduates deal with the challenges of real life is rooted in the fact that most people ignore the purpose of education. Why do we go to school? Why should people go to school? What is the purpose of education? What is the raison d’être of education? What are the goals of education? Why should parents send their children to school? Education is one of the most abused or, rather, misunderstood human experiences. Unless the purpose of education is understood and clarified, the continuation of its abuse (by most people) will remain unavoidable. Many people go to school for the wrong reasons. Also, most parents send their children to school for the wrong reasons. Most people have misconceptions about the goals of education.
It is imperative to note that this problem is rooted in the fact that the biggest incentive to go to school in the early days of its creation in different parts of the world was that it was a ticket to prosperity. This was possible because then employment opportunities abounded for educated people. But things have changed, and very significantly. In most of the world today, there is a high level of unemployment among educated people. Therefore, education no longer guarantees financial success. In fact, education has become one of the main causes of poverty, considering the fact that it does not provide for instilling the knowledge of wealth creation principles in the students.
It is high time the purpose of education was reconsidered. The idea of going to school for a certificate should be denounced, if the training will improve the lives of educated people. The idea of going to school to prepare for gainful employment should also be stated because there are limited employment opportunities for unlimited graduates. If the school prepares graduates for employment, but there are limited employment opportunities for an unlimited number of graduates, it means that the school prepares students for unemployment. That is why the idea that school simply prepares students for paid employment is unacceptable.
The ideal purpose of education is to facilitate an integral development of the human person – the intellectual, moral, physical, social, spiritual, psychic and psychological dimensions of man. School attendance should facilitate the optimal development of all aspects of the human person. An ideal educational system should not isolate any aspect of man in the training process, or consider some aspects more important than others. Anything below this is an aberration and is unacceptable.
Every educational process must be able to help students develop their latent potential. Any educational process that does not meet this objective is useless. When the mind is developed, it is capable of identifying and solving problems for humanity and consequently be rewarded with reward. Money is simply the reward for solving problems. Any graduate who cannot solve problems in society lacks the capacity for wealth creation. This is a fact that most graduates ignore.
Education will help graduates to be happy and fulfilled in life if it is structured to facilitate the optimal development of their minds. If this is done, education will equip graduates with the skills necessary to survive economic battles and real-life challenges. It is very painful to point out that education has remained incapable of fulfilling a practical purpose because most of the things that the school system teaches students are things that they do not need to survive in real life. In other words, most students spend years in school learning things that won’t be useful to them when the school days are over. The crux of this deficiency in the educational system is that the most concerned people in the educational sector are unaware of its existence.
One of the key goals of education is empowerment. If the educational system is restructured for this purpose, graduates will become assets, but not liabilities, no matter the circumstances. Such an educational process will help students create jobs if they cannot get them when they graduate. As noted above, education is a process, and any process is incomplete without a product. The quality of a product is the most reliable standard for determining the quality of the process that produced it. There is an urgent need to restructure the education system to ensure that the training it instills in students adequately equips them to effectively meet life’s challenges, especially when school days are over.
Although the consequences of the shortcomings of the education system in its current form explain the unpleasant experiences of most graduates in real life, the government has continually demonstrated an increasing incompetence in addressing this challenge. Consequently, it has become obvious that graduates who consciously desire a bright, refreshing and happy life must acquire Further Education for themselves before their school education will have the desired effect on their lives. It also implies that students must also go beyond what they are taught in class if they are truly passionate about happiness in the real world (ie life after school).
