Day 20: How Important Education Is...

Education.  How important is it to me?

Well, to be honest, not that important.  Why?  Well let me explain.

There are too many successful people who have made boatloads of money without going to college.  Lebron James, Alex Rodriguez, Kobe Bryant, Josh Hamilton, Leo Messi, Kevin Garnett, Sidney Crosby, Maria Sharapova, Rafa Nadal, Roger Federer, Cal Ripken Jr., Derek Jeter, Pete Rose, Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, Pele, Wayne Gretzky, and Muhammad Ali all didn't attend college.  Think about that.  I didn't even mention the other tennis players and golf players who have made hundreds of thousands of dollars NOT sitting in a college lecture hall for 4 years.  Those names are also only Athletes.

Want more proof?  Bill Gates and Paul Allen of Microsoft, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak of Apple, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Michael Dell of Dell Computers, Lilliane Bettencourt of L'Oreal, Ingvar Kamprad of  IKEA, and Christy Walton of Wal-Mart.  You can't look at this list and tell me that higher education will amount to vast wealth and success in the real world.

Now, what will amount to success in the real world is the aspect of hard work.  Every single one of those people figured out that they were good at something that didn't require an education and went out and got wealthy doing that one thing they were good at.

I certainly feel that educating oneself on certain things is a necessity.  But I don't know to what point we should stop educating people and teaching them certain skills that are no longer taught in a classroom.  Sewing, cooking, wood shop, metal shop, car maintenance, electro-tech and other very useful classes that are taught in classrooms are still done today.  It's just that we can't use test scores to validate the success of the students that take those courses.

In season 4 of the Wire, one of the police officers becomes a teacher and picks up on the fact that school districts can boost the test scores if they "juke the stats" :

It's this kind of politics in the education system that I do not like.  The warping of test scores so that districts can get more money.  This above all else is the worst part of the education system.  It's no longer about the finished product anymore.