Why Study All Your Life: Understanding the Meaning of Education and Self-Education | PaperHelp

At least once in our lives, many of us have asked our parents: “Why to learn?” Perhaps one day, such a question will catch you because children, as a rule, are not very eager to learn and are interested in more matters that are distracted and unrelated to schooling. And what do you think, what is the point of education? Do we need to know, and how do you feel about the concept of lifelong learning? Let’s figure it out together with paperhelp — what is the point of education?

First, I would like to start with the seemingly contradictory stories related to successful but uneducated people. Such people include:

Ingvar Kamprad

The founder of the significant company IKEA has consistently received positive reviews from his close friends and acquaintances, but he is an undereducated man, as the entrepreneur himself claimed. Ingvar had no higher education, but he was already selling Christmas toys, stationery, and even fish as a child.

Henry Ford

The famous automobile industrialist ran away from home at the age of 16, moved to Detroit, and began working as an engineer for the Edison Illuminating Company. As many analysts have noted, Henry Ford had the gift of a brilliant manager along with engineering ability.

Michael Dell

The founder of Dell Computers became one of the world’s wealthiest people with no higher education. Already at the age of eight, the future businessman discarded the desire to finish high school, not to mention higher education — there were plenty of life plans.

All of these people were able to achieve great success without higher education. Still, analyzing the stories under consideration, one can notice that each successful person is goal-oriented, has ideas, and has good communication and organizational skills. The relevance of these qualities is not lost today, but the presence of a diploma of higher education as a determining factor in hiring is questioned more and more often. Let’s try to understand whether it is necessary to study or not.

Let’s agree on the division of education itself into two types:

• Academic (learning, which involves taking classes in high school, in higher education, receiving a lot of theoretical material and information);
• Practical (training aimed at acquiring some specific skills and abilities).

The philosophy of academic training is as follows: “I need to master, learn a certain material to pass the exam. I’ll get a diploma, I can work and make money,” while the philosophy of hands-on learning is different: “I need to learn it to apply my knowledge in practice, to get some concrete material result.”

Analyzing the characteristics of both types of learning, we can lean towards the fact that the second type (hands-on learning) is more productive, helpful, and rational. In principle, the success stories prove this. But it turns out that academic education also carries several advantages. We invite you to consider them.

Self-Discipline

Of course, without exception, everyone has to fight procrastination, laziness, and unwillingness to work hard and long. Still, the process of learning to a large extent, spurs us on and makes us do homework, read books, solve problems, etc.

Thinking Development.

Most schoolchildren (and adults) think it is useless to solve integrals if you are interested in biology or read “The Master and Margarita” if you want to become a programmer. But in fact, we are forced to do it not because we necessarily need this knowledge, but to develop specific skills, which every educated person needs.

Mathematics gives the ability to think logically and rationally, literature — literacy, the ability to be an interesting conversationalist and express their views, history trains memory and makes a person erudite. Physical education takes care of health and elementary physical fitness, etc. Each subject, even without being necessary for you, in one way or another, reveals facets of your personality that allow you to look at the world with a more transparent and more open view.

Developing erudition for authority

Agree. It is quite prestigious to be a reading, interested person today. If you do not know the difference between the Great Patriotic War and World War II, your interlocutors will not take you as an educated person. Still, such elementary knowledge is acquired already in school. Therefore, it is worth learning to appear their authority in other people’s eyes.

The ability to see a situation from a different point of view

As has already been said, thanks to training, you look at the world more clearly, from different angles, and this gives you the fundamentally important ability to put yourself in another person’s shoes, to imagine what they are going through and what feelings and thoughts they may be experiencing right now. To some extent, education develops empathy, which will undoubtedly help anyone in life (mainly influenced by literature, where we get acquainted with many different characters).

As you can see, academic education mainly aims to expand the framework by which our minds are constrained by nature. The study of the rules and laws of life helps us gain a kind of conscious freedom and, in a certain sense, to overcome ourselves. Nevertheless, today particular importance is given to practical training because trends in the labor market are changing. Society is rapidly progressing, leading to new professions and skills. Let’s highlight some of these trends.

The development of the freelance sector

According to statistics, about 35% of the working population in the United States work as freelancers, and 78% of Britons believe that freelancing helps best solve the problem of work-life balance.

The era of in-demand skills

Because most of the population leans toward freelancing, a person needs to constantly learn new skills that will provide them with additional competitiveness to distinguish them from other freelancers.

The “Me” brand.

Every person in today’s world is becoming a commodity in a sense. We learn how to position ourselves, show the right side of ourselves, acquire valuable and in-demand skills, all to sell the “Me” product for a higher price, to find a job with the possibility of good career growth.

Additional training

In today’s world, it’s important not to dwell on your first degree, which employers devalue when hiring because they are increasingly stating that they don’t care about a degree. What is important? The initiative, additional certifications, courses completed, real-world skills, competitions, and things characterize you as someone seeking self-education and additional training.

Population aging

The seemingly aging population trend is purely demographic, directly affecting the job market. By raising the retirement age, the working population expands at the expense of those who are younger than the new retirement age bars, so the life cycle of a worker increases, and time, as you know, does not standstill. Therefore, people of age have to retrain to gain new competencies.

By the way, this information is confirmed by the statistics of the World Labor Organization (WOL), namely:

• the average age of a worker worldwide will increase to 41 years in 10 years;
• In 10 years, there will be two young workers working for one retiree (rather than three).

A straightforward thought follows from the above trends: we need to learn. Undoubtedly. And especially relevant today is the concept of lifelong education (life-long education), which implies constant development and improvement, expanding the list of mastered competencies, professional development, and acquiring new skills.

Based on the predictions of the WoT, shortly among all employee competencies, the first place in importance will be critical thinking, which, note, is developed by a successful combination of both academic and practical training. So do not be lazy, fight against “procrastination,” try to work at school and university, not on grades. Still, your future, take an interest, be proactive and open to new things, fight cognitive distortions, capitalize on your personality.

And also, at the beginning of the article, we gave a small (and certainly not complete) list of people who managed to achieve great success without resorting to higher education. In the end, we would like to emphasize just the opposite.

You are now sitting in front of the screen of your gadget, which was developed by a group of programmers who have hardly completed at least a course in programming. You are sitting in a room designed by architects and built by a group of builders. You may be drinking coffee, which resulted from the work of food technologists and, before them, agrarians. You are wearing clothes sewn according to specific calculations, patterns, and technology. Everything around you in this second contains the result of labor. So be daring, be curious and strive to create. Then laziness will be a thing of the past, and life will be more enjoyable.