What’s wrong with formal education? (and I’m finally studying now)
I just started studying for my 3 exams (all 3 math courses: calculus, data management, and algebra & geometry) a few minutes ago. I procrastinated a lot for this (as I usually do for tests) because math gives me the chilly willies, bad memories of, well, math, and I seem to like to work with words now more than numbers. The only reason I took all 3 maths in the first place was because I NEEDED them in order to take computer science at the University of Waterloo, otherwise if I had it my way, then I wouldn’t have taken ANY of them. I could’ve learned only what I NEEDED to learn WHEN I needed to learn it, instead of simply digesting the pages and pages of lessons that I had to learn simply to write some tests and exams to see if I could remember it all within a 2 hour period or not (because afterwards, all of the knowledge just disappears, anyways.)
Also, who’s to say you need a formal education to get to where you want to go? Yes, it does give you a better advantage, and it can make you smarter, and all that good stuff - but the same can happen if you are passionate enough about what you want to do. If you are truly passionate about doing something, then too much schoolwork can, in fact, hinder your performance in what you really want to do. I’m not saying I’ll be a university drop-out, or not go to university at all. But I’m also saying that going to university does not necessarily mean that you will be in the top percentile, in terms, say, wealth, or the much more ambiguous ’success’, in our society.
Examples of people who did not receive a formal education (or less than the full amount that they intended to have) for what they wanted to do but still managed to become very ’successful’ (success is very relative):
Business
Music
The above are just some examples, and yes, they are debatable. I can’t think of anymore at the top of my head so far (except for people that are related to the people in the list already), so if you come up with anyone, then feel free to post them in the comments.
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Formal education increases chances of success however. In the exceptions, those people would’ve done even better with a formal education.
David, not necessarily. Maybe a formal education had too many constraints on them and so that’s why they didn’t pursue a formal education.
Also, the point of this post is to say that just because you got a formal education, doesn’t mean you’ll become uber-successful, neither does NOT getting a formal education mean that you WON’T be uber-successful.
Pft. Then it’s a pointless post because if one is lucky or skilled enough, then one doesn’t need any education at all.
No, but getting an education is a JUST-IN-CASE thing. It’s a backup, just in case you don’t become successful in something else. Like Bill Gates going to Harvard. He went - just-in-case.
“Also, the point of this post is to say that just because you got a formal education, doesn’t mean you’ll become uber-successful, neither does NOT getting a formal education mean that you WON’T be uber-successful.”
Stop changing the point of your post.
Obviously it’s a just in case thing. Why do you think I’m going to school? I’m going just in case I don’t win the lottery and become independently wealthy *rolling eyes at moment
But it also requires logic. And as you know, the chances of winning the lottery are very slim. Anyways, some of the people in my examples (and many others) don’t even go to university as a just-in-case reason. They simply go and pursue what they want to pursue, usually immediately after high school.
I believed I once read that 99% of the world population and 90% of the U. S. population don’t receive college education.
And of that 10% US population I wonder have many received their education from a diploma mill.
I dislike the way in which you base your arguments on this concept of success. I feel that since success is an existential experience, it is unfair to say that education may even potentially lead to it. One can be successful without ever having set foot in this western ideal known as ’success’. Moreover, if one experiences the world through a veil of blissful ignorance, wil not achieving personal success seem all the much easier and sweeter? And perhaps this is preferable to acquiring a formal education that results in a bleached worldview?
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