What’s the Point of Education?

Let’s take a moment today and talk about education. It’s something we all care about, one way or another, and yet education (particularly public education) is one of the most backwards institutions in the world today.

If you have about twenty minutes to spare, I’d like to ask you to watch this video below. In it, Sir Ken Robinson discusses the state of modern education, asking: “Do schools kill creativity?” Please do watch this video if you have the time; it’s funny, insightful, and totally worth it.

If you’d rather skip the video for now, that’s fine too. Just scroll down for the rest of the post.

What is Education For?

A quote from the video:

“If you were to visit education as an alien and ask: ‘What’s it for?’ … I think you’d have to conclude the whole purpose of public education, throughout the world, is to produce university professors.”

I think he’s hit the nail on the head here.

Take standardized tests, for example. I grew up on those things. And whether you’re in favor of standardized testing or not, you can’t deny that it skews the way our teachers teach. Entire curriculums are built around standardized tests. We’re no longer grooming our children to become engineers or artists or doctors or lawyers – instead, we’re training them to pass tests.

In other words, we’re educating our kids to be good at … getting educated. Which is fine. Unless, like most people, you expect kids  to eventually graduate from school and take control of their own lives.

Where are Educational “Reforms” Taking Us?

The irony of it all is that everyone knows our educational systems are screwed up.

Politicians LOVE to talk about educational reform, because we as voters love to hear about it. But where are these proposed reforms actually taking us? How do we judge the value of an educational reform?

(Quick note – I live in Texas, so I’ll be talking about what I know, which is the American school system. My apologies to any non-American readers. I hope this is useful anyway.)

President Barack Obama recently pledged that “by 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.”

Sounds good, right?

But I think this kind of reform initiative is incredibly superficial. Take a look at what its actual goal is. Not a smarter populace, not a more productive populace, but a populace with more diplomas. These reforms aren’t about raising the quality or relevance of education. Instead, they’re about the quantity of people who get to wear robes and mortarboards and parade to Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance. And possibly about bragging rights. It’s education for the sake of appearances.

Does this make anyone else’s blood boil? Because just writing about this is pissing me off.

If anyone with any sort of political power is reading this, I’ve got a simple message for you: stop blathering about graduation rates and start making sure that graduating MEANS something. Because right now, every year, college degrees are becoming more and more worthless.

By the way, I’ve got a surefire way to skyrocket graduation rates. Lower the bar. Or, better yet, dump the bar entirely. Give out college degrees to anyone who wants one.

I’m only half kidding here, people. It’s no coincidence that we’re wasting time worrying about graduation rates while our educational systems are in decline. If your primary concern is getting as many people to hold a diploma as possible, then it’s inevitable that the actual value of that diploma will plummet.

Ken Robinson calls it “educational inflation.” Sure, everyone will have an education – but in name only, because the actual learning will be worthless. What’s worse, in our rush to hand out diplomas like candy, we squander the talents of the brilliant students we should be focusing on. Which brings me to the next point.

Not Everyone Should Have a Degree

“The whole system of public education around the world is a protracted process of university entrance. And the consequences is that many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they’re not.”

I’ve got two (possibly controversial) points to make here.

First, instead of lowering the bar for graduation, we should be raising it. Yeah. That means graduation rates will probably go down. Politicians won’t have pretty, empty statistics to flaunt during elections, and we won’t get frivolous bragging rights when we compare graduation rates with other countries.

And yes, it also means that some kids will flunk. Some parents will get upset. But that’s a good thing – which is my second point:

Not everyone needs a degree in the first place. Nowadays, we seem to believe that degree = success and no degree = no success. That couldn’t be more wrong.

For one thing, the self-help section at your local bookstore is chock-full of juicy anecdotes about wildly successful people without college degrees.

Of course, some people will say: “But Jeffrey, these anecdotes are the exception. For the average person, a college degree is still necessary.”

Let me be blunt here: no it isn’t. We’ve made it necessary by twisting our ideas of education and ability. We’ve trained ourselves to accept “graduation,” when what we’re really looking for is competence. Receiving a diploma doesn’t make you a skilled, competent, productive individual any more than putting on a black belt makes you a martial arts master.

Some people aren’t cut out to be great academics. But that doesn’t necessarily make them less intelligent. It just means they probably won’t turn out to be university professors.

What matters is what you know – not how you learn it.

You don’t need a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing to pen a bestselling novel. You don’t need an MBA to start a successful company. Going to college might help … but then again it might not.

The way I look at it, if you can do great things without getting a college degree, then you’ve got a four year head start on everyone else.

Or, as a friend of mine puts it, “Noah’s Ark was built by amateurs. It took professionals to build the Titanic.”

And yes, I’m aware that, under the status quo, employers tend to make hiring decisions based on college degrees. But the status quo is dying. I’m waiting for an innovative company to come along and say: “We don’t give a rat’s ass about your degree or lack of one. If you think you have what it takes to work here, come and prove it.”

Am I saying that colleges are useless and we should all drop out? Not at all. College educations can be very useful. But let’s not confuse the means (systematized education) with the ends (skills and ability).

Food for Thought

A few more quotes from the video to think about (slightly paraphrased):

• “Kids will take a chance. If they don’t know, they’ll have a go [...] they’re not frightened of being wrong.”

• “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”

• “We know three things about intelligence. Intelligence is diverse [...] intelligence is dynamic [...] intelligence is distinct.”

• “We may not see this future, but [our children] will. Our task is to help them make something of it.”

What Do You Think?

What’s your take on education? What’s good or bad about our current systems of education? What would you do to improve things? Are you mad at me for ranting in this post?

Let’s talk.

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