LivingLife: Successful Dropouts

The late Steve Jobs was just one name on the list of successful entrepreneurs who famously dropped out of school because they were not able to pursue their dreams and innovations which at the end became feted by the same famous schools as examples of success. So one would be tempted to say that the formal education system is ‘useless’ because it is not the exclusive source of professional success as it has always been engrained in our medulla oblongatas. So is school really useless? The answer to that is a resounding No. schools impart education to humans, be it academic, tertiary, or even the school of hard knocks. The problem actually is not the school but those who go to that school and sometimes those in charge of imparting education. The basic aim of school is to teach someone something new and useful and thereby helping to change their approach or attitude towards life. An education that is saved for examinations and not for learning life is itself useless. For example, a medical school student who can recite every known disease or complication that can affect the liver may just have a good memory. A good doctor will have to know the diseases and the symptoms as well, not just by recitation but by real experience. That is why every medical student spends compulsory internship as part of their training. It goes that good grades do not mean professional success, instead the ability to balance the demands of professional life which includes sharp wits, ability to survive in the battlefield that is often the office, to something as simple as problems solving or people management skills. This simple fact is the one that successful dropouts have learnt. Usually they become engrossed in their studies and begin to move beyond studying to pass exams but to discover, imagine, or blaze the professional trails. But in most comfortable famous universities, the institutions accommodate ingenuity by trying to make it conform to the ‘normal’ yet such a student wants to achieve the abnormal crazy level. So naturally a student drops out, takes all the knowledge they have gained from the school and base on it to blaze the trail. For every person in engaged in education, they should realize that passing exams alone is almost useless in the real world beyond passing the interview based on good grades. For school to be useful, it should simply open the floodgates to information. Learning to read and write is not just for the purpose of reading and writing but for the bigger suppose of discovering what is hidden in books, newspapers and any other writing material. School serves the purpose of helping one to open their eyes and minds to the wider world. Learning which in itself is a lifelong process only begins with formal education which gives you the initiative to begin your own informal education. Sometimes, people who have gone through the education system and have discovered a worth much more of useful knowledge outside of the system begin to shun the education system, yet it’s the same system that enabled them to see further than just the class. We should teach our children not to just get good grades but encourage them to use their newly found knowledge to scale further the world of information. Have a successful Sunday!http://Twitter.com/KelvinOdoobo