The success of my school year depends on my memorization skills
The success of all my school years, from grammar school to university, has been measured on how well I can memorize a particular section of a textbook. As soon as I passed any given exam, all that information was be deleted from my mind. I had to make room for more stuff. I spent years of my life inside a library, cursing myself for memorizing stuff that I would never use.
Our culture and our systems don’t push us to learn. They push us to conform and to consume instead – Seth Godin
Do you even remember anything?
How many of you remember anything from your calculus class? From your biology class? How many of you remember all those little details that created the differences between an A or an F?
I never dared to ask why I was memorizing all these dates, formulas, phrases, etc? How was all that information applicable to real life? What was the world going to gain from me memorizing one more chapter? “Is this going to be on the test”? I would ask, because if it wasn’t, why would I even bother listening to it.
We are mortgaging our lives
Still to this day very few people ask these questions. We continue mortgaging our life, with money and time, for an education that only has marginal value. The opportunity cost is just too high not to question what we are doing. What is the net value of our time and money and how does it compare to other alternatives? What is the opportunity cost? What are we giving up?
Let’s change the social script
Today we are at liberty to abandon the social script. We have to wake up and realize that we can craft our own way, decide where we want to go and how we want to go there. There are millions of free resources out there. We can learn what we want, when we want, for free or for a fraction of the cost of traditional education.
The education system continues to evolve. If you want to be a programmer, you can take an internet class about programming, don’t take a geography class. If you want to be an artist, don’t take a calculus class.
Of course, if you’re a brain surgeon, as a patient, I’ll feel more comfortable knowing that you have a diploma on your wall. But for most professions, do they really need to take all those classes? If you are studying programming, why would you be obliged to take electives such as Spanish or history? Shouldn’t you have an alternative?
Let’s give better options to the future generation
The system is what it is, and there are many forces that will fight to keep it this way. It might be too late for you, as it is too late for me, we have already been processed by the system. But if we’re aware that there is another way to get educated, perhaps we can inform future generations that there are many alternatives out there.