Wait, hold up there. I know what you're going to say. You're going to say I'm wrong, wrong wrong wrong wrong. You're going to say that you should never give up the opportunity of free education, ever. But give me an opportunity to throw in my two cents and I'll explain to you why I have a point.
One of the most timeless and true observations that has ever been made is that the way out of poverty is through education. I would never contest this because it has been proven to be truth so many times over. What I would like to point out, however, is that I believe there is such thing as the wrong kind of education.
And though the wrong kind of education exists, it doesn't come into existence until approximately 11 years of school are through. After that point, a huge truth becomes obvious. This truth being that the right kind of education differs for everyone. What makes it especially difficult is each human's massively differing tastes in what they like to do. Different people are interested in different things. Some people like to look after other people, some people like to boss other people around. Some people love to write and dream about the world, others love science and analyzing it.
The thing about high school is that most 16-year-olds simply have no clue what they're intending to spend the rest of their lives doing. Of course they don't. They're 16. And while it is excellent that our society does recognise that education is the way out of poverty, it fails to take into account most people can't choose the path for the rest of their lives when they are 16.
Because we unfortunately don't do anything by halves, the concept has been blown out of proportion to the point that a whole new sector of our society has been formed. It's called University and is an invention that fills the gap between adolescence and adulthood that never previously existed. It teaches us that before we start behaving responsibly, we need to get shitfaced each weekend and copulate with anything that has a pulse.
Worst of all, it teaches us that we can't enter the real world until we've spent 3-4 years studying a degree in something pointless that we're vaguely interested in. And after this we leave, just as confused as when we entered, with our bachelor's of English Literature or Archaeology or Oceanography or something else mostly useless. Work begins as a secretary or waitress or filing-cabinet boy, and we slowly climb the ranks to better work and better pay, the whole time shouldered with a massive student loan that will continue to burden our thoughts for the next twenty years.
Essentially, first-world society values what is essentially a caricature of education. This is why I believe school drop-outs have got it right, and that our culture is wrong to sneer at people who choose to take a different route.
After 11 years of bells dictating lunch-times, some people realise that they've had enough of education from nine to three and instead choose to face the curveballs and reap the rewards that a daily job offers them instead.Working in "the real world" does not necessarily equate to a life of manual work and penury.Actually, it is what so many people need in order to realise exactly it is they want to achieve with their allocation of time on earth. And instead of condemning people who leave school in order to do this, I think it is about time we started celebrating and supporting them instead. There is more than enough school-drop out successes to go around: people who left school at the age of 16 include Simon Cowell, Richard Branson, Peter Jackson and Henry Ford.
It is increasingly forgotten that learning is just as often accomplished through experience, and not soley through theory. High School drop-outs don't have loans, have the road clear ahead of them, quickly become responsible members of society and have certainly got it right.
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