The Terrible Advice Education Gives Us

In the education system, students are primarily measured by grades and diplomas.  Consequently, the education system–teachers, counselors, parents–equate success to good grades and big diplomas.  Education’s advice: “If you get good grades and you get big diplomas, you’ll be all set.  And you’ll be able to do whatever you want.”

This is completely misguided.

How many students do you see finish school, and then say to themselves, “so what am I going to do now?” It then turns into a crisis.  They simply have no idea what to do.  They’ve been operating largely under the assumption that they just needed to focus on getting good grades and big diplomas.

I’ve seen this “What to do” crisis hit graduates of all levels–college students, graduate students, even medical school students.  I’ve met med school students that go through the long tumultuous road of becoming a doctor, to only end up asking, “Do I actually want to spend my life being a doctor?”

One of the problems is that students end up setting a degree as a goal: “I’m going to get my PHD in Public Health.”  School is just a tool to help you get what you want.  Not an end in itself. Students should be asking, “What do I love? And how can I use my education to get there?”

Apparently, we even have a phrase for this now, The Quarter Life Crisis.  And the education system plays a role in this.  Classrooms only help bolster what you already do.  Classrooms in themselves are tangential to the world outside of education.

It’s easy to complain about any system.  But I’ll offer a solution that I’ll be implementing once it’s time to educate my own kids: Students should be directly measured by their portfolio of work. Making this change, changes the whole game.

-Kevin
5.25.2010