Is a Formal College Education Really Necessary?

I am part of a group called 1FLOS where we explore many different trends which reflect on our economy and the direction world governments are headed and what we may need to do to survive the upcoming potential catastrophes as a result of poor choices made by the various governments.

1FLOS as providing a different way to live.  FLOS stands for Flawless Living Operating System.

Our mentor Mike Jay sent us an article about our president wanting to cut federal money to technical schools by 20 percent and to increase overall education funding by 11 percent in the hopes of achieving the following goal: “wants America to produce the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020”.

When I grew up the dream of most parents was to have their children graduate from college and get a better job than what they had.  My sister, brother and I all graduated from college.

I loved school and learning and I firmly believe everyone should always be learning and becoming more informed and knowledgeable.  However, that does not mean that any of that learning should take place in a formal environment like universities.

For example, with the Internet, one can learn just about anything they want.  However, they can not practice all that they learn through the Internet.  This is where technical schools come in.

As the article [see Tough Calculus] indicates some people just learn better and understand concepts better when framed in a hands-on environment.

I agree with what Mike Jay said in his email about the article: “The biggest damage today done to people, their happiness and success, is to force a collegiate style educational model which involves MOSTLY, a reflect, observe, memorize and regurgitate set of skills.“

I have learned more after I graduated than I did while in class.  It is because I am able to quickly practice what I learn and because it is because I am learning things that interest me and not things others say I need to learn in order to get a piece of paper saying I survived 4-6 years of “higher education”.

We all learn differently and we all have different goals and purposes to fulfill in life.  Trying to force-fit everyone into the same mold is why we are failing in education.

To me the main goal of public education should be to teach people how to learn; to help people understand that we are all unique and special; that we all have a purpose in life; and that we should strive to add value to the lives of others by sharing our purpose [skills, talents, and joys] with others.

To achieve this goal, we do need to teach our young people how to read, write and to communicate well with others.

You may have noticed that I did not include math in that statement even though I majored in math and psychology and taught math for several year.

It may be because math comes naturally to me.  Because I use it everyday, I do not always think in terms of how valuable it is.  Part of living well is being able to manage our finances well and, to me, math plays a major roll in that.  I can give many examples of that and I will save it for another time.

It is wrong to try to fit everyone into the same mold and then expect everyone to be successful.  That is the old way of doing things.  We need to look at people differently and acknowledge that we are all different, and unique.  We need to allow and help each person to discover his/her own path and then help him/her to follow that path to their success & happiness.

Tags: Calculus, Catastrophes, College Education, College Graduates, Economy, Education Funding, Educational Model, Email, Federal Money, Formal Environment, Happiness, Lear, Mentor, Operating System, Poor Choices, Proportion, Sister Brother, Technical Schools, Universities, World Governments