What College Did to Me.

How we as a society have got education totally wrong.

We all know that college is no longer an institution of learning. It’s sort of a factory that churns out graduates. In India, colleges and schools were once known as the “temples of learning”. Oh, that’s no longer true. Colleges and Schools today are in many ways an industry. Have money lying around? Open up a school. Hire the people looking for jobs, and you have an “educational institution”. It doesn’t even have to be certified. Nor do the people who work need to know a thing about teaching. Opening up a school was considered a great deed once upon a time. But what it’s doing to the most of us ain’t pretty.

Many educationists in the past like Seymour Papert and Jean Piaget promoted the idea of Constructivism their entire lives.

Constructivism suggests that people, children in particular, are capable of building their own mental constructs for learning. This is a whole field of research done in educational psychology. Children are known to be the most inquisitive and fearless when it comes to learning.

They’re not afraid to get their hands dirty.

They’re not afraid to speak they’re mind out.

The attention span of a child is enormous and children are capable of staying focused and concentrated on one thing for quite a long time.

Children are more decisive than adults. If they like or don’t like something, they will let you know.

They won’t look for validation for their opinion from an external environment.

They’re not afraid to ask the right questions when the time comes.

As a child you will have learned most. Until you join school. Believe it or not, schooling does remind me of a prison in many ways. Students are made to sit in rows and columns, inside a “cell” which we call a classroom. They’re instructed to walk to and from classes in queues, with hands behind they’re backs, finger on their lips. They’re identities at the end of the day, are just mere roll numbers. They are “punished” and “rewarded” for bad and good behavior respectively. Although the definition of good behavior is quite vague in most schools.(this is actually how most schools work).

The whole idea behind learning in schools is that you cannot make any mistakes. In your books or otherwise. You cannot express yourself and you cannot question authority, Even when the authority is wrong. The day you enter school, you will be told some “facts”, instructed with some rules, and you have to follow those rules, regardless of whether they are right or wrong. You will be entrusted with principles you never stood by and expectations you can never live up to.

You don’t have that sense of individualism that you were once allowed to have in the freedom and warmth of your household. You don’t have that sense of belonging. This is exactly when you’re personality starts bending and molding into a puppet. A puppet that talks and acts in accordance to rules set by society. Once school is done with you, you no longer know how to learn. You know how memorize. You no longer ask the right questions. You ask questions that you’re supposed to ask. The Teachers in schools have to no longer have empathy, love and respect for learning. They just need to hold certain degrees and diplomas. There is a huge chunk of underpaid teachers in the world today.

For me, college oppressed my love for learning. I am deeply interested in how nature and science works, and how you can use scientific principles to build a future. Sounds really nice doesn’t it? College doesn’t agree. The more I tried to preserve this side of me in college, the worse it got for me. My life just revolved around assignments and unit tests and exams. I had to endure boring lectures and and uninteresting environment to get that one certificate at the end of it all which might or might not be worth it at all.

You will not find “The Spark”. College for you will be like the job for that bald fat man in his forties working nine to five from paycheck to paycheck.

College will never teach you to go after what you want no matter what. If you are in college right now and you want to “Go after what you want”, you have to ask for permission. You have to finish your assignments, coursework, exam -prep and useless practical assignments before you even think of putting your head into something else. There is 0 chance that you’ll actually get any liberty. You’ll be their slave.And the worst part is you’ll be paying them to boss you around.

There are some exceptions though. Some colleges are really marvelous for students to learn and study. I’m sure we’ll be rich enough to afford them someday.

College will cut short your enthusiasm by asking you to do only what will appear in your examinations. You won’t be allowed to go the extra mile. You won’t be allowed to delve deep into something that interests you. You will always swim in those shallow waters, where you dabble in a subject here and a subject there, pass the exam, and not actually finish or get good at something. You do that on your own time. If you have any left.

The solution? Well, you could always take a huge loan and get into a private institution that puts your next 5 to 6 generations into debt.

Or you could act wisely and go after what you want.

I dropped out of college in summer 2017, and I vowed never to go back. I traveled to my home town, trying to recollect the memories of my childhood, and trying to find my individual self again. I focused on my health, taught in a martial arts school for a while and started reflecting back on all that I had lost (and gained ) in college, re-aligned my goals and ambitions, started this blog and enrolled in a distance learning program. Now I can finish my degree by attending classes(optional) on weekends and learning things my way. And also have ample amount of time to do anything else in the whole world.

This is 2018. You can go after what you want. Regardless of what the world says. You no longer need to ask for permission. You just need to get really good at what you love doing. And then show it to the world. If you are good enough, people will love your work, and they will welcome you. College is no longer necessary. School is no longer necessary. But Learning is. Lifelong learning. There are couples that are homeschooling their children. And they turn out to be just fine. There are people who work two jobs and take courses over the weekend. They have great careers. And so can you. In this generation you have the power to carve out your own path. customize it. And succeed.