Micah 6:8

Education

I've recently come to believe that our society is over-educated in some areas and grossly under-educated in other areas. Let me explain. As I mentioned in my previous post I've been learning a lot of domestic skills lately. This made me think about how dependent I was and our society is on businesses and companies to produce the things that we need. Until I knew how to preserve foods I was dependent on companies to do it for me and to supply me with food for the winter. Before I knew how to sew I was dependent on stores to sell clothing. I realize now how under-educated our society is in some of these basic survival skills. This leaves us in a very weak position should we face a large disaster.

While we're under-educated in this area I think that we're over-educated in academic areas. I went to school for 15 years (2 years post secondary + k-12). What skills do I still use? Well, basic math, reading and writing. I also have a lot of useless factual knowledge buried in my brain. I know that some of my education has helped me be able to think more clearly but I don't think I needed to spend as much time as I did studying to get to the place that I'm at. If I hadn't spent so much time learning useless things I could have learned more practical life skills from my mother. Schools are so driven towards heavy academics. They assume that everyone should strive towards degrees and academics after high school but this is simply not true.

I think that these conditions leave us in a bad position as a society. Not only are we at risk if a disaster occurs but it also affects families. When girls are encouraged through their childhood and teens years to go into academics many of them feel like they have to in order to be successful. Life skills are consequently undervalued. When they start to have families a lot of these woman don't know what to do with themselves and then feel useless. Consequently, a lot of them will look to work for fulfillment and this will affect their family. I don't think it matters if they got through a degree or not. Educated woman as well as less educated woman are trained to think that work is necessary to be useful. Please don't think that I'm saying that woman should stay out of academics. Some woman, especially single or childless woman, may be very happy and useful in these fields.

The push for academics can also have a negative impact on men. Some men are not going to succeed in academics. If they don't succeed school they may feel useless. Trades are also undervalued. This will also have a negative effect on their families.

I've also seen people get absorbed in less then useful education. People spend years working on philosophy or sociology degrees with no idea of what their end goal is. Surely they could be doing something better with their time and money. Why is this considered a respectable thing to do? What I'm trying to get across is that people should be more willing to be happy and respected with out a lot of education.

Posted by rose at February 4, 2005 12:30 PM | TrackBack