Time Spent At School Is Time Wasted

Schooling systems everywhere still represent old beliefs and they instill employee mentality in small children.

Pupils are trained to be obedient, assess their abilities purely by grades and learn only by the theory rather than by practice.

There are so many faults with the current schooling system that this short article only goes into the most obvious ones.

My time at school wasn’t the happiest one. There were too many sheep trying to copy the most popular kids at school and most subjects I was taught were plainly useless.

Individuality was discouraged and uniformity was encouraged. Creativity was suppressed and doing things the way you are told to do was encouraged. Not my kind of system.

I could have used my time so much better than sitting at the desk and memorising loads of information I knew I would never use. At least I had a good friend in the same class, who shared similar point of view to that of mine.

Even while I was a pupil, I found many crazy beliefs that people bought into. Now, as I am more mature, I can see many more faults with the schooling system. Here are the most common and obvious school system faults:

No practice – only theory

Practice without theory equals time wasting. What’s the point in learning something you cannot apply or have no chance of applying? I see no purpose in memorising historical dates only to pass exams or learning about art when you absolutely hate it.

Success does not depend on how well you remember dates or how good you are at explaining what author meant by saying this or writing that. Success depends on clearly knowing what you want and persistently taking action to achieve it. Unfortunately, that is not taught in schools. Reciting and taking exams are considered much more important activities.

No problem solving skills

The most common way of teaching kids at school is by testing them. If they get correct answers, they are considered intelligent; If they get wrong answers, they are considered lazy and stupid. The way to learn correct answers is almost always by memorising dates or events. No thinking involved, just memory.

This activity may be good for your memory, but it is useless for other life skills. Once you are faced with a tough problem, you will have no memorised answer for its solving. Children need to develop problem solving skills as early as possible, so that they would not be stuck or quit once a real life problem presents itself.

No leadership lessons

The most disappointing fact in every school is that children are taught to be followers rather than leaders. They are taught to be obedient to their teachers and if they obey, they get good grades.

This behaviour gets ingrained so deeply into the psyche of children that they behave exactly the same way when they become adults. They seek approval from people they consider to be higher, they seek jobs because everyone does it without thinking of creating something of their own. They strive to be good employees so that their managers would give them pat on the back.

They know nothing about leadership therefore they do not even try to become leaders. If they do, they get scared and quit because their peers say that it will be hard to do that and that they are likely to fail.

No essential money lessons

It is mind-boggling how school can miss one of the most important subjects anyone should learn in this lifetime – how to manage and make money. Mysteriously, this subject is non-existent in schools. Children finish schools, universities and colleges without the skill to earn money.

They get their money education from people around them who are in the same financial situation that they are. As Napoleon Hill said, “Opinions are the cheapest commodities on earth. Everyone has a flock of them ready to be wished upon anyone who will accept them”. It is amazing that people are happy to accept financial advice from their parents or neighbours who have no money. If the person you are seeking advice from is older than you are, it does not mean that he/she is smarter than you. In most cases they are not, you just think they are.

Children are assessed by what grades they get

The fault with the whole grading system is that children get the idea that they are as good as their grades. That is never right because each person is unique and the standard grading system can never show the true worth of a person.

People who have greatest memory and who are willing do to homework are the ones that get highest grades. Does that make them the best people there are? Absolutely not.

The child only gets poor grades on the subject she doesn’t enjoy. If there would be a compelling reason for a child to do homework and get good grades, she would.

For example, in my schooling system (I was raised in Lithuania) we have 12 grades. Till grade 10 I was an average (I would say below average) student. The topics simply did not interest me and there was no reward for me doing my homework and memorising the information.

However, when I decided to study abroad, I realised that I could only get there if my grades were very good (I soon quit the university, but that’s a whole another story). So in less than two years I become one of the top students in the subjects that I needed to take the exams. I was the only person in the whole capital who passed the English exam without any errors whatsoever. That’s what any child is capable of once there is a sweet reward for their hard work.

Of course, you may say that the reward for hard work at school is a better chance of success or better job. Such rewards are not only too vague, but they are incorrect. Even if children would believe that they would be more successful if they would get good grades – such goal is too general, not many would be motivated by such goal. The more definite the goal is, the more motivated the person will become.

On the side note, it is really bad when parents push their children to study the subjects children are not interested in. That can completely ruin the life of a child because he forgets that he should be the one in charge of his destiny. He then lets others control his life – which almost always ends in some kind of disaster.

No creativity

We are creative beings and if your creativity is suppressed, you will end up following those who retained their creativity despite the rigid schooling system. Everyone is creative in their hearts, but some people are unable to easily express creativity due to some stupid system they were once part of – like university, school or an academic institution.

Once people whose creativity was suppressed think of creating something, such as their own business, self-doubt and fear takes over them and that automatically repels clients and profitable ventures from them. Then such people come to the wrong conclusion that they are just not the ‘creative type’ and leave it at that. Again, this is due to the poor schooling system.

Teachers are not properly trained

Ideally, teachers should have some kind of psychology or NLP training to be able to treat children appropriately. So many children develop poor self images and go through live with low-self esteem not achieving anything of great significance because of the memories of teachers telling them “You are lazy, you will not achieve anything”.

I remember, my maths teacher was so strict that she would shout at children if they would not get correct answers. Everyone who were bad at maths (including me) feared to go into her class. Thanks God, she was replaced in later years by another teacher whom I absolutely loved because I could make deals with her in return for good grades:)

I probably wouldn’t be too wrong to say that most adults with poor self images have their teachers or schoolmates to blame. It is amazing that even these days you find teachers who shout at children and insult them in front of a class.

So here are the most obvious school faults that ruin so many promising lives. Everyone is unique, creative and has the power to achieve great success. However, educational systems can really mess up the chances of many. I sincerely hope that one day educational systems will be transformed to prepare children for life in a much better way than they do now.

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