Relevance of Education Today

In school they tell you to follow your dream. They tell you that whatever you can imagine, you can achieve. They spoon-feed bullshit ideals of “going for what you want”. I, along with every one of my classmates was told that if we wanted, we could be the President of the United States of America. Let’s think about this logically, my class had a little over 1,000 students graduate the year that I did. So I was taught, along with a little over 999 students, that we could be president.

The state that I went to school in from K-12 grade is Georgia. To this day we have only ever had one president (and an unsuccessful one at that) that hailed from Georgia. Jimmy Carter, a one term president. So the odds that I, or any of the thousand people I went to school with is slim.

But that is not what they tell you. They don’t tell you that even if you are motivated, get good grades, go to college, and even further your education that you can be what you want to be. This is the predicament of my generation. We are the most educated, un-experienced, entitled generation this country has ever seen. I did the whole thing of getting through high school and going to college, and finishing college, and now I am looking around saying, what’s next? I did what was expected of me. I go for a job, and they want someone who has completed graduate school. I get into grad school; go for an interview and I don’t have enough experience. I go and try and get experience and I am either under-educated or too educated. This is the plight that many of my generation is facing.

My father did not even finish high school and joined the army. He joined the army in 1966 when he was 17 years of age. He was inducted with parental consent. My father will give you a very formal title for what he did in the army, but all he mainly did was drive around very important people from one place to another. When he was discharged from the army he went into sales for a tire company. He was really good at this so his talent was recognized by more important people. Flash forward a few years and he is in sales for the poultry business. Instead of selling tires he is selling conveyer belts and machines that are worth thousands of dollars. Flash forward a few years from there, and he is a project engineer for one of the largest poultry companies where he deals with millions of dollars at a time.

He did all of this without ever stepping foot into a university. He makes over $100,000 a year and has no degree; he has many certificates, but no degree. What does he have that you or I do not? Is it some level of talent that no one else can ever possess? Is it some magical formula? Is it simply luck?

It is none of the above. The cold hard truth is the fact that my father lived in a time where companies saw the potential of a prospective employee, and not just what could be proven on paper. The company did not care what schools you went to, or the highest level you completed, they cared about the person. What they thought the person could achieve with the right guidance. Trust me, I have known many graduates that could not solve an addition problem without the use of their hands. And then you have people like my father, who never went to a “higher education” learning center that could run circles around other “graduates”.

This leads me back to what I stated earlier. My generation is the generation that was taught that they could do anything. Be anyone. I am a struggling writer with many years of college underneath my belt and I cannot seem to make a dime. Why? Because it is 2013. Talent is of no importance. Training… it’s non-existent. All I am is what I can prove on paper. There is no section for potential. There is no section for talent. I read a Newsweek article that my generation is the most disadvantaged generation since the “silent generation”. (That being the generation that came of age during the Great Depression”.)

Since when did talent become something that could be measured by a degree? Remember that Einstein worked as a clerk while developing his ground breaking theories of relativity. William Shakespeare had only an eighth grade education. Many famous women, Emily Dickenson and Louisa May Alcott to name a couple, had only an education that was afforded women at that time, which was not much considering the era.

Yet we hold these people as geniuses because we recognize talent, not education, but talent. Just look at me: I have had a lifetime of education, but my talent is questionable at best.