I was a pretty good student at school.
I got mostly A-grades, received several awards for academic achievement, and took part in various extracurricular activities. You wouldn’t have called me an exemplary student, but I don’t think I was far from it.
You know what all that counted for when I left school? Nothing.
The issue is that the school system does not prepare students for the realities of the world. Instead, it places unnecessary expectations on them to excel in everything, taking into account no consideration for their natural inclinations towards alternative ways of thinking, nor taking into account what ‘real life’ skills a student may or may not have picked up outside the classroom.
Look at people like Albert Einstein, Anna Wintour, or Sir Richard Branson. They all made for poor students, which traditional thinking would imply means they would have little success in life. Of course, that wasn’t to be the case. We celebrate them as innovators, and raise the fact that they were expected to be failures as a hero’s tale about how they proved the system wrong.
They might be rare examples. You might be thinking that they are geniuses in their own right, and that nothing was ever going to stop them from reaching their full potential. Maybe you’re right, but what about those whose full potential lies outside of the fields of physics, woodworking, or maths a/b/c?
Is the system’s perception of them not proof that it is fundamentally wrong? It can leave teachers and fellow pupils thinking those people are destined to spend the rest of their lives working at McDonald’s, but if you’ve been following The 8 Percent for any time at all you’d know that many great people come from humble beginnings. The problem stems from the point when the student starts to resign themselves to this fate as well.
It’s not just the students who struggle in the classroom that the system lets down either.
When I was 14, I was rejected for a job at a fast-food restaurant. I honestly don’t think many people can say the same. It would have been my first job, having just hit the legal age of employment, and I honestly had no idea what I was getting into. It was embarrassing; I had no interview skills!
Years later, everyone told me to get a credit card. I had my own money, so why would I need a credit card?
These were simple hurdles with simple solutions. Some people understood them straight away. I definitely didn’t. Sure, I could have asked my parents, but I was a teenaged boy, so my relationship with them was explosive at best.
Meanwhile, I was getting top marks for a religion test, knowing full-well that the only scripture I’d ever care about quoting again came from that one scene in Pulp Fiction.
So what’s the solution?
I’m not saying the system needs to be overhauled. It might be nice, but it’s never going to happen.
The change needs to come not from building a new system, but from patching the cracks in the old one. As they are taught about the dangers of drugs or the rules of the road, so too should students be taught how to invest their savings, or understand a lease agreement. These aren’t just concerns for those looking to become a biologist or an account. These are concerns for every single child in every single classroom around the developed world. Whether this is taught in the class or by external parties doesn’t matter, so long as it’s done.
I also believe students need to have more flexibility in their learning. I’ve heard of schools that allow free periods, but I highly doubt that many students take them with any kind of motivation to get work done. Instead, these sessions could be designed to allow students to work on projects of their own choosing using what resources the school can offer, and whatever else the student can find. Some may view it as an easy way to slack off, but it provides opportunity for the students who want to try.
These are just ideas. I am not an educator. I’m just a man in his late-20s, hoping that generations from now, young adults leaving schools don’t have to struggle to understand the fundamentals of life in modern society.
I’m interested in hearing your thoughts on the matter. Feel free to leave them in the comments below.
Hi Oliver and the 8 percent, I too am in my late 20’s and no doubt your sentiment resonates with many, including me. I studied for nearly 7 years through university across several degrees and have traversed significant heartache and sacrifice to become a lawyer in my chosen field. I have only been in practice for a short while as I write, and throughout that process it become all too clear that anything (and everything) worthwhile that I have ever learned has not come from a formal education or work system. Instead, it has come from launching into self induced paths of enquiry and projects, trial and error, making inevitably wrong decisions and remedying them.
The formal system needs to take steps to support students in the notion that learning is in an individual endeavour instead of a one size fits all collective approach. The system tends to pay lip service to individuality during students formative years to only then ride on the coat tails of those same students who found success later in life by fundamentally challenging the formal system’s very definition of success.
The formal system needs to teach basic life skills like how to open a bank account, how to use a credit card, how interest and investment works, how the financial system works, how real estate works, how to register a business name, how politics works and how to vote, how Centrelink and government benefits work, how the tax landscape works, how to do a tax return, how to read a financial statement, how to pay bills, how to apply for a loan, how renting/leasing works, how to draft a resume, how to apply for a lease, how civil law enforcement and the local courts work, how the internet and social media/presence works..the possibilities are myriad.
The caveat is that the unique skill and capability of each individual should be recognised and not tapered to fit the broader scheme. It is those skills and knowledge that will equip a student to achieve success as they define it, otherwise they are destined to become a slave to an outdated process in a rapidly changing social and technological dynamic. Some of the most wildly successful people I know were ordinary at school in the traditional sense, yet they believed in their natural flows and are now leaps and bounds ahead of the general demographic.
How is that actually achieved in practice Well, my guess is as good as the next one, I certainly don’t profess to have that answer.
I, too, qualify all of that by saying that I am not an educator, merely someone who has derived more enjoyment out of self fulfilling endeavours than any formal study/work process I have ever undertaken. My hope is that it doesn’t take others as long to realise their natural potential as it did me.
Thanks for taking the time to reply, Matthew. I agree with everything you’re saying.
Hopefully someone with a background in education will lend their voice to the discussion in order to suggest ways in which similar ideas can be brought into practice.