Is education a waste of time and money?

https://medium.com/the-polymath-project/rethinking-education-c8754b3d77b4

by _chu • 8 years ago

2 1 8 years ago

I don't really know where I stand regarding college. In high school I was in the "college is a waste of time and money" boat, so much that I probably seemed condescending and annoying to all of my friends. I was lucky enough to get into programming when I was pretty young, and I made a decent amount of money in high school doing it so I didn't see why I really needed to spend four more years in school. I got a job at a local startup within a week of graduating and boy I thought I was the shit. After a couple months I started to feel bored and realized that I missed learning. I spent a ridiculous amount of time watching physics and math videos at my desk, and then eventually applied to schools and quit my job. I'm at school now and, ironically, I owe it to that job. If I had just gone straight to college I would've continued being the horrible student I was in high school and I would've probably dropped out by now.

I won't speak on whether or not I think going to college is a waste or not, but I do have to disagree with the author's point about high school.

Take geometry, for example. I can’t think of a single instance in the last five years where I used any concepts from geometry. Or take language classes. I took four years of Spanish in high school. What do I remember? Nada.

Have I ever used anything I learned in geometry in real life? No, I don't think so. But as a freshman I did think geometry was really fucking cool. Taking that first geometry class helped me discover a love for mathematics which I'm now majoring in. There is probably a better way to help kids discover what they like, but I don't think people who call high school useless have ever really reflected on how important it is. Have I used anything from the more advanced math courses after geometry? Nope. I stayed in school for those classes though.

I think high school isn't necessarily about learning important information, but it's about learning how to learn and discovering your interests. High school gets kids thinking, even if it's about stupid and useless stuff. If you were to just drop some students into classes about "important" things, they'd probably have a very hard time actually retaining any of the information or forming an opinion on it. None of this is to say that high school is perfect, there are probably better ways to do all of this stuff. Taking four years of history probably wasn't necessary for me, all it did was teach me that I didn't like history, but I'm sure someone somewhere took something from it.

Anyway, that's my long, rambly rant about education. I still have no idea what I want to do with my life but I feel like a better person when I'm learning and doing something, and I owe that to school.

Is education a waste of time and money?

Related Stories