Raymond Thomas Dalio said, "School typically doesn't prepare young people for real life--unless their lives are spent following instructions and pleasing others. In my opinion, that's why so many students who succeed in school fail in life." This thought is a resounding one. I doubt if those who may disagree with it would surpass those who may agree with it.
I am an incurable optimist on the subject of acquiring formal education. I grew up knowing that without my acquiring an appreciable level of formal education, I may not amount to much in terms of personal fulfillment. Something within me let me know right from adolescence that if I didn't attend college, my life wouldn't mean much.
I have said this because of one event that happened when I was 12. At that time I was in secondary school, having completed six years of primary education, which I started at age 6. By November of 1980, the year I began secondary school, I lost my father and my mother was left alone in her wilderness to raise us alone. It was gloomy. Reflecting on the event and what I felt about my future, I came to the point that without at least a college degree, life may not be meaningful for me because I had been exposed to books quite early. I loved books; and still do.
Now, this is me. Someone else feels differently about the question of their life and how they think their life should go. I used to know a teenager 16 years ago who told me that he didn't have to go to school to make it in life. What "make it" means is not a talk for today. The young man went on to explain to me things he'd done "on the streets" when he was in the UK.
Presently, I am having a mentorship engagement with a teenager whose parents have great plans to send to college. He already completed high school education in a very prestigious secondary school in Lagos. His parents have all it takes to send him to college anywhere in the world. His grandpa even wants him to go to Harvard.
However, an immediate tertiary education is not on this teenager's bucket list. The young man is completely entrepreneurial in his outlook to life. Having finished high school, he has two things in mind: play football and be an entrepreneur. As we speak, he is already making money branding clothes to sell. He has done this for 2 years, even while in school, and he has sustained this passion. This teenager knows what he wants from life and he is going about it systematically.
I attended an event in which a prominent Nigerian lawyer, Senior Advocate of Nigeria [SAN], narrated how he and his wife sent their son to study law abroad. Their intention was to prepare and build him up to eventually take over their thriving law practice. The young man studied law and returned to Nigeria but as we speak, he's a megastar in the Nigerian entertainment industry. He is into music and comedy and really thriving in the path that he has chosen for himself.
Many years back, a young man who knew his gift and talent well enough believed that staying in college may rob him of the self-actualization of the innate treasure he had become aware of. He withdrew himself from an Ivy League institution to pursue what he saw as his passion. He made no mistake about it. He was spot on.
In our part of the world especially, we are plagued with the bug of college education: "My son is a graduate of ABC University;" "My grandson is a graduate of XYZ University;" "My daughter graduated from UAC college." The conversations often go that way. It seems more like an ego-driven past time for these folks. Many times as we see today, these certificates have turned out completely irrelevant to those who carry them and the society.
Of what value is a college or tertiary education that robs you of your dream and natural inclination? Do not get me wrong on this one. There is nothing wrong if college education would support your natural inclination or if you would not be able to achieve your interest or dream without earning a college education. College education is a great accomplishment if it supports your dream and helps your subsistence.
To be a doctor, a pharmacist, an engineer, an architect or any of such professions, a college degree is the way to go. It is more essential to state that this is great if the choice was not made by parents. Often, parents want their children to be addressed in those titles and that is where their pride lies, even if the children are not inclined towards that. Should this be so?
Someone once told me that a tertiary education is a must-have and I laughed. How can attending college be a compulsion? Who should decide that: the parents, the child or the gift hidden in the child? This is one question that many parents have not critically asked themselves. There has to be a shift in the paradigm of parents. Society does need a shift in position regarding this issue.
If the natural inclination of a child is to be an artisan, I think that such a child should be supported in the area where he or she would find satisfaction. One thing that the parents should do is to see how they can support the child to acquire basic formal education: reading, writing and the ability to relate and engage with others. But to force them into the way of tertiary education is not an option to be imagined.
Not many adults understand what education really means. Education is not just about formal schooling. Education is not the formal school that is devoid of an unschooled mind. A mind that understands values, principles and is responsible to the question of the meaning and purpose of life is an educated one. You may not need a tertiary education to actualise yourself. Education is obviously not just about piling up degrees upon degrees without defining relevance.
I have engaged with not a few young persons who have first and second degrees. Some are even on their way to a doctorate but still have not identified what is it they want from life. Some are not even able to apply themselves to basic life's situations because they lack the understanding of what their presence in this space is all about. They have degrees and certificates but they are not educated. Their minds are unfruitful and unproductive.
Spending 3 to 6 or 7 years in a tertiary institution does not automatically mean that you are educated. Finding meaning and relevance of your existence and being able to apply and become that meaning is the kernel of an educated mind.
We have an abundance of educated persons who are not literate in the things that matter to life. Despite being a part of life and nature, they do not know what life and nature mean or hold. We have been blinded from the things that matter to looking in the wrong direction. And that has caused us a huge waste of every resource: time, energy, money, and more.
Many graduates of tertiary institutions have no idea or knowledge of the environment they live in. They are not even able to self-manage. What exactly is the benefit of the certificates they carry when they are not able to define and deliver personal effectiveness and self-management?
Knowing what you want to do in life with your life is the best form of education there is. If this is understood by those who raise children and they commit to the uphill task, they should learn to first learn about the lives they're trying to make.
What is innate to the child? How do we make it realise itself? How do we develop same around the external in terms of skills acquisition and the application of same for value and service? At what point is the education they're getting no longer in sync with their innate desires and natural inclinations, however frequently it metamorphoses?
This is true education. A commitment to the process of child nurturing in this way should determine if tertiary is the way to go or if it's the functional basic and then the pursuit of other vocations is the way to go. Tertiary education should not be a one-size-fits-all thing.
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