In our high school math class we suspected that we would never need at least 90% of what our math teacher was teaching us, though he kept warning us that our lives would tank if we didn't pass trigonometry.
Well, our suspicions were 100% correct, and our teacher, bless his good heart, was all wrong. All of my friends are getting along in life just fine, and, in 2.5 decades, we haven't run into a trig problem this side of the math class.
As big as I am on education, what I'm really steamed about is how little classroom instructions have in common with what happens in the real world. It is my strong opinion that formal education must always be relevant outside of class. Education must always answer the question, "Education for what?". Learning and life should intersect.
This advice may come too late for this year's graduates, but here it is anyway: Discover how you are designed and what your dreams are. Then tailor your education to your goals in life.
Education should turn the educated into a problem solver. Education is best when it is targeted. Aim your education at a target, or you might end up with good-for-nothing education. Why are you a student? Why do you want to take that class? What will you do with the education? What need will it meet? What problems will your knowledge solve? Until you know what you'll use your education for, you may not yet have a good enough reason to invest time and money in that course of study. There is such a thing as worthless information or useless education.
When I talk to a student in high school or college, I often ask, "So what field are you going into?" Most of the time the youngster has no clue. Some students graduate from college and still don't know what they'll be when they grow up. Sixteen years of education and they have not the foggiest idea what it's for!
What difference it would make if students, starting in middle school, would be guided towards a career path? What if instructors began to tailor that child's education to a foreknown line of work?
There should not be such a disconnect between what goes on in the classroom and what is needed for life in the marketplace. Our high schools should be churning out bright minds that businesses need and can instantly put to work that pays. With thousands of graduates pouring out of America's colleges, our companies should not be relying on thousands of technicians, engineers, scientists and doctors from foreign lands. Have we made the funding of irrelevant education the norm for our system of learning on which we spend billions every school year?
Should we not seek and get education that has something in common with the fields students want to work in? And should not this connection be made as early as possible during the learning curve? Why should parents and students spend so much more time and money after twelve years of high school to get post-secondary education that's actually worth something in the real world?
It should not take technical schools, trade schools or special training to solve the problems that beset us. Use your education to provide a service that people need. That's how education pays. When you can solve problems with your skill, you will begin to add value to anyone you work for, including yourself. When you know your stuff, the employer will think twice before firing you, unless you have a nasty attitude.
Can you have the right kind of education for the right kind of job and still be laid off? Yes. But when that happens, because you are well educated in your field, it won't be long before another employer scoops you up, unless your line of work has become obsolete. Or during your jobless period, you may realize that the combined impact of your training plus your experience has already prepared you to catapult you into that elite class of humans known as "entrepreneurs". In that case, you'll no longer be in the business of printing resumes and licking stamps to disburse them. Why? You'll be receiving resumes instead, making the hiring decisions.
If you become that new entrepreneur, then you were probably not in our high school math class. More than likely, you were busy learning something that's actually useful in the real world than trig, something more true to life than measuring the half shadows of bridges, towers and trees. You got education that pays the bills, and that's no trig.
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