Last night I was in Barnes and Noble and a family was standing near me. I overheard the following conversation:
Mom: “What book do you have to get for summer reading?”
Son: “Fahrenheit 451 or something…I don’t know. I don’t need to get it.”
Mom “Why not?”
Son “Because I don’t want to read that.”
Mom “Ok. Let’s see if there is a movie and we can rent that.”
Hearing that made me think about a problem which I have seen for a while now. That is the fact the United States education system is broken.
Why? Because it encourages conformity, regurgitation, and does not encourage creativity and the willingness to follow one’s passion in life. I think students are often persuaded to pursue fields such as accounting, law, and medicine. Fields which will bring home the bacon.
All to many students graduate college and hate what they do in life. Assuming they work full time and get 2 weeks vacation lets look at how much of their life is spent doing what they hate.
40 hour work week x 50wks = 2000 hrs a year of work or 34% of your awake year (assuming you sleep 8hrs a day which leaves 5840 wake hours out of 8760 total hours in a year)
34% of your year being unhappy? And Im not even taking into account drive time, getting ready for work…all the time your subconscious is saying “Eghhh I have to do xyz when I get to work or…eghhh today was horrible, can’t wait for the weekend”
So here is where I think the system needs a tweak….
Elementary years for the most part are good as children learn the basics to be used in the real world. As one enters the high school years (mostly 10th-12th grade), you start to show individual interests. Whether you find physics class more interesting than biology or vice versa. But what happens if a student dislikes all of their classes? Often times they are seen as a bad student and told “if you do not get good grades you will not get into a good college and not get a good job” which thus means “you will not go far in life.”
Is this really true on society? Now before you question this concept, let me clarify. I completely understand and agree if you want to become a doctor you need to go to school to get the experience and knowledge from experts in order to be properly trained for your career. However, what if your interest is becoming an artist? Marketing? Does a college education truly benefit you?
I have spoken to a bunch of marketing students who recently graduated and asked them about marketing tools and concepts which are being used for present day companies. Guess how many of them say they were taught these principles?…….0. Some professions change so fast (especially marketing, graphic design etc) that a traditional text book educational system cannot keep up with. The professors are not in the field (for the most part) as they spend all their time teaching instead of doing.
I know there are some points I am making that are neither black nor white but rather in a gray area but be open minded and think about my below suggestion for a fix:
Internships….Now before you say “I did an internship. What are you talking about?” let me explain. When I was in college for zoology, we had our normal zoological course load coupled with all the standard core classes required by the college. In my junior year we were required to do 1 internship (consisting of 8hrs a week) each semester but also encouraged to do more in our “spare” time.
There are only maybe 4 months you spend doing each internship bringing the grand total to 128hrs a semester. That’s about 3 weeks of work at a job in your field. How is 6 weeks working in your field enough experience to enter the work force let alone be enough to get recommendations and compete with others who are applying for the same positions when you graduate?
The other option is to do more internships while in college. Assuming you are like 80% of all other college students, you are broke and have no idea how you will be paying back the $80,000 student loan you will owe upon graduation. So your 4 years are spent flipping burgers in the college’s cafeteria or selling books in the bookstore in order to get a slight break on your tuition as who would want to hire you in a field you have no experience in. Adding a decent non-paid internship to your week is out of the question because you are too busy taking World History, Intro to Literature, Basic Math and other “core” classes the college deemed important. Guess they lost your high school diploma when you applied which said you already have taken such courses.
What would happen if we removed the core courses, added experienced based paid internships (yes I know some exist but not many) and the ability to take more specialized classes per your field? That in my opinion is the solution but the problem is the educational system…especially colleges/universities are a bandwagon kind of business (yes it is a business built around a service [education]) and unless they all shift, I do not foresee change coming any time soon.
