Halfway into adulthood, most people realise how many things necessary to navigate a decent life were never taught in school or college. Important matters such as finances, debt & mortgage, mental health awareness, relationship/marriage, consent, criminal laws and much more is left to be discovered by the student several years after completing school or college, where the focus is on memorising textbook contents and reproducing the same in structured examinations. And one wonders at some point – why aren’t these life skills ever taught in school?

This is a result of a misunderstanding that school is meant to prepare us for life ahead, which is far from the truth, especially in the Indian academic system where outdated syllabus continues to be taught for decades; and the syllabus itself is based on theory, formulas and memorisation of definitions which most likely will never be used in real life. Schools and colleges are clearly not designed to encourage free thinking or assisting a student in becoming a good citizen.

The academic system was designed, instead, to produce workers. Education was designed to have sequential knowledge imparted on students which will enable them to be useful in the workforce – whether as engineers, doctors, accountants or other professions which the country requires. Schools can be considered as factories where skilled & obedient workers are the output.

http://www.radnor-sevenoaks.org/school-of-life-or-exam-factory/

Mass education was the ingenious machine constructed by industrialism to produce the kind of adults it needed. The problem was inordinately complex. How to pre-adapt children for a new world – a world of repetitive indoor toil, smoke, noise, machines, crowded living conditions, collective discipline, a world in which time was to be regulated not by the cycle of sun and moon, but by the factory whistle and the clock.

http://hackeducation.com/2015/04/25/factory-model

Industrialism gave birth to the concept of human factories where independent thinking or talents are diminished, so that employers are able to find adequate workforce to fill in the vacancies in various professional fields. Whether one stays back in the home country or decides to move abroad, life skills are learned over time with experience or trial and error. There are no guidelines on how to be a parent, how to manage taxes, how to be a good citizen, how to crack an interview or how to honour one’s own inner voice. And the pattern continues generation over generation.

While we will still send our future children to school, we must also educate the new generation on things which they will never be taught in school. We have all had to struggle in various areas of life due to ignorance passed down from our own previous generations, but we can create a better generation which is equipped to excel not just in exams but in all areas of life.

We can hope that the education system is reformed someday, but instead of waiting for a miracle, we can take the first steps in educating ourselves and passing down real education to today’s children.