It’s easy to complain about what schools don’t teach us. After all there are infinite things to learn, and a school — whether we like it or not — can only focus on a handful of them. Still, we can talk about some of the key ingredients of education which schools either leave out or put them together in a faulty manner.
The fundamental problem lies in how schools approach the idea of knowledge. Schools seem to suggest that the most important things are already known; that what is, is all could be. They have a set number of topics they want to talk us through, and must distract us from wandering too far away from their own ideas. They teach us to redeploy concepts rather than originate them. They teach us to deliver on, rather than change, expectations. And they do this by making use of an authority to convince us that they are doing the right thing.
Schools should be about creating perspectives, not enforcing already understood ones. What happens because of that is, we end up preparing for certain kinds of jobs, but very rarely are we able to determine what kind of jobs would suit us. This remains more of an instinctive feeling, as we have recieved no training to tackle the question. A similar problem is reflected in another — and perhaps more important — area of our lives: relationships. We learn how to fulfill the roles of different relationships, but seldom do we know the art of forming them in the first place.
The long-lasting impact of following the authority can be damaging. It stops us from growing into a responsible adult. In a deep part of our minds, we may linger long into adulthood, caged within the confines of a school-based worldview — generating immense and unnecessary degrees of unhappiness and compromises in the process. That’s because we never left the classrooms. We might be in an office selling garden furniture to the Belgian market and thinking like as though there were exams to pass. We might have children of our own and by all appearances be an adult, and yet still be living within as though there were cups to be won. The feeling never leaves.
We start our school when we are not much bigger than a chair. For more than a decade, it’s all we know, it is the outside world — and is what those who love us most tell us we should respect. It speaks with immense confidence, not just about itself, but about life in general. It is sold to us as a preparation for the whole existence. But, of course, the main thing it does is to prepare us for yet more school; it is an education in how to thrive within its own profoundly peculiar rules — with only a tenuous connection to the world beyond.
If this causes a certain amount of despair, shock or even rage, you should take this opportunity to do something you may not have done for years. Start to learn what is required to achieve our full potential and lasting happiness, those truly core subjects which we should have included in our curriculum a long time ago. Never mind, it’s not too late. Instead of focusing on what schools don’t teach us, we must ask ourselves: what can we do to overcome our education?
Reference books:
Kalampedia 