Is Formal Education A Mistake?













13 Replies to “Is Formal Education A Mistake?”

    1. Thanks a million for the well constructed article I must say that you absolutely spoke my mind. As a biomedical scientist, I can’t imagine not having formal education to certain degree.


  1. Rinz,

    My opinion here is that the formal education system is ‘broken’. Majority of students graduate from university without any ‘real world’ skills and hence can’t find employment or even more importantly create their own employment for themselves and others because they are not equipped with the entrepreneurial skills when the government, as is often the case, fails to provide employment opportunities. This, I think, is because the education in today’s world, fails to teach holistic skills. Rather, the system has been groomed, from the inception of the formal education system to create ‘robots’ who specialise in one field and go to work for a large organisation and make someone else rich. The way the system is today, is a result of rich industrialists who, during the industrial revolution, needed workers for their humongous organisations e.g. Rockefellers, Carnegie etc. Some of these rich individuals are among the richest in history and influenced government policy on education and even built educational institutions and the like to ‘educate’ workers who would be a supply line for their multinational organisations and keep themselves in a position of privilege. I think the education system needs a revolution to teach students holistic skills and create rounded individuals who are worldly and can adapt in any field of endeavour. The way of the world today in this information age, is to be multi-skilled and many millennials can operate in more than one field of specialism and the trend points to a future where one will have to be self-educated and be versatile to specialise in several fields or be left behind.

    Interesting article Sha.


    1. Interesting view. I agree with everything you’ve said but my point is coming from a developing country, can one really understand the benefits of self-education if s/he lacks formal education?


      1. Hi,

        My comments apply to the world education system at large both in developing and developed nations. From my experience, the education system, having being a student in a developing (Nigeria) and developed country (UK) doesn’t teach real awareness to enable ALL students to realise their full potential. I feel that less than 1% of all students since the inception of the formal education system have gained ‘real’ awareness of themselves and the world and this is reflected in the current state of affairs we see in the world with famines, diseases, poverty, wars etc. being prevalent. Why isn’t there much tangible change in the world today? We have gone to the moon as a race and plan to establish a colony on planet Mars but can’t live together in peace on planet Earth. The evidence points to a distortion in priority of human needs in the world at large. Isn’t the education system supposed to produce enlightened individuals who can ‘change’ the world? This is the rhetoric that is endlessly heard from our colonial masters but with all the presidents and prime ministers who have graduated from the elite universities, we all live in a world which seems to lack areal sense of community.

        Thank You.


        1. I agree that formal education doesn’t always enable students to reach their full potential. But the same happens in other forms of education. Take for example, not every footballer reaches his full potential. In the end, the student/footballer still has to put in a lot of work to reach the potential s/he is capable of.


  2. Education is beautiful but like you opined, without quality evaluation of our educational system (I’m referring to Nigeria), we may really not be gaining much going through school.


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