A close folk of mine, names withheld, who had covet-able skills in styling fabrics once approached her parents with the idea of devoting some commitments towards enhancing this skill and subsequently exploring its marketability potentials.
Check out her parents’ reply as inspired by the society’s belief. “We will not want to have you go into any venture now asides schooling. You can always do that when you are out of school. For now, school is not your first but only priority”.
It should be noted that the lady in context will graduate out of the university in four years away from the present. When notified about this, my hate for the school system aggravated. So just as a result of this narrow-intended system, this young miss is meant to watch her passion that represents an integral portion of her being, slip and waste away with time. Days after days, months after months and years after years. Many a time, I imagine the numerous life realities and opportunities we are rendered handicapped from grasping owing to this limiting system. A system that has come to stand as a confinement that hosts its hostages which constitutes mostly of young adults for a span of years after which they are hatched like vulnerable chicks without a mother hen. Bearing them into the ever eagerly waiting hands of dependency, unemployment and unhealthy competition. Where the full course of survival of the fittest is given a front row.
The society have come to be so myopic about the concept of education. Taking schooling as the entirety of it. That notion must be corrected. “The school system remains only as a subset in the universal set of Education”. There exists a host of compliments to this subset. By this I mean that there are countless numbers of ways to become an educated fellow asides schooling. Just in case you might want to ask for alternatives to schooling that pays about more, skill acquisition of countless sort is one. It is high time we redirect our focus to the vast variety of means that fosters intellectual development, curricula development has not been remedying to the prevailing anomalies faced by the human society.
I was often made to think that, if anything is capable of broadening our horizon about a particular subject, then it educates us. But why can’t this dynamism be appreciated? Why must our mentality be limited to the possibility of getting educated only by a means? “Jesus the Messiah, Mohammed the Messenger, Socrates the Logician and an unending list of others were never in the formal school system but I see the well-schooled theologians and philosophers finding it very difficult to fully resolve their teachings, ideologies and theories to an appreciable degree.
For those who have always had it in their thoughts that school is a factory where successful people are manufactured, you will have to do a rethought after going through this. Steve Jobs, Henry Ford, Opra Winfrey, Bill Gates, Richard Branson and our very own Mark Zuckerberg alongside a host of others are the richest guys in the world with lots of intellectual commands. Yet none of the aforementioned ever graduated from a higher learning institution before they came to the spotlight. I know some persons will hypocritically say “I don’t do it for the money but for the knowledge”. Well, the lives of these folks explain it all as they’ve got a notable placement in the list of those that command great relevance in the economic scene, influence-wise and intellectually but are not products of the all acclaimed school system. There should be more preference on self-discovery, with or without a guide rather than the bandwagon followership which I refer as a societal routine that will always yield about the same result. Imagine if Michael Joseph Jackson’s parents had forced him into the College of Engineering or prevented him from going for his dance rehearsals, feeling that he might get distracted. The same goes to Mohammed Ali, Mikel Obi, Sean Carta, Michael Jeffrey, Neymar da Silva Santos Júnior or Usain Bolt. I admire and pour much support on one of the wise sayings of George Bush, “Education is about inspiring one’s mind not just filling their head”.
I am not of the stance that school is evil and there’s nothing to gain from it. As a matter of fact, I acknowledge the fact that a lot of persons wouldn’t have attained the height they operate from right now safe for the school system. But we must also note that the successes of our destines are not necessarily tied to schooling.
One major anomaly that I have come to take an unsupportive posture with amongst the practices in the school system is the means of testing. I must confess that I resent it. “When different persons of diverse personality complex, assimilation level, intelligent quotient and temperament are tested by the same means and by the same test in order to be graded on the same scale, I sense a breach on the course of individuality, a betrayal on the move of humanity”.
Albert Einstein once opined that “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing its stupid”. Buttressing on this, I will say that “the unified testing methodology in the school terrain without critical considerations on the individual peculiarities that exist amongst students has left a lot of slap scars on the face of individuality and has alike thrown countless successful punches to the entire body of humanity. What a brutality! What an abuse!” The hysteria created by these inconsiderate tests called examinations is just too overwhelming.
This is a system that puts both young and old on the run, denying them of themselves, motivating them to do whatever it takes not paying close attention to the moral wholesomeness of their actions all in the bane of earning a paper print that carries their supposed worth and what should determine their fate. In another disadvantaging sense, this system has undoubtedly fueled the raise of social vices in the society. “Bribery and corruption, examination malpractice, sexual harassment and scandals are reoccurring decimals in the school system”. And as many whose nature fail in coping well with these conditions, are tagged to be incompetent and unworthy. To victims of this, I put it to you that the school system can only tell you your worth by their own grading standards, it cannot tell you who you are in reality. So, there’s no point to despair.
There is need for a revolution and a rebranding of our thought patterns towards the concept of Education. Education is an interesting and inspiring experience and not a prison box or a race field. Mark out your goals in life and go for them with or without going to school. A lot more are yet unsaid but lets all think on this.
– Joseph Caleb Adinoyi
Email: josephcaleb558@yahoo.com
Contact no.: 08162162216
