| Navigation |
 |
|
Visit our career center to view the top job sites and resume
posting services. >>> |
|
 |
Article - Knowledge is useless without skills
back
The school of life is one that is not often accepted as providing a high value education, and yet it teaches lessons that cannot be encapsulated by any college course. Many people, for many different reasons, do not attend a formal educational institution, but this does not negate the valuable lessons they learn, or the enormous contribution that they can make to the working world.
Many of the world's foremost thinkers, people who have made great discoveries, invented things we could not do without, and literally changed the course of history, had no formal education or qualifications to verify all that they had achieved. Richard Branson, the entrepreneur who began the Virgin group, for example, has no degree from an accredited college, but should this negate the impact he has had upon the business world? To suggest this is ridiculous.
There are many things that cannot be learned in a college classroom, which are nonetheless invaluable, if not completely necessary, in becoming successful in today's world. Knowledge might be an easily quantified thing, but it is useless without the skills to apply it. We learn so much from books and we should never underestimate their value, but a full education requires something more than knowledge acquisition. In the words of the philosopher Herbert Spencer, 'the great aim of education is not knowledge but action.'
Learning in the classroom can be a structured thing, and we can learn to equate education with this experience alone. But in truth, education is an organic thing, and something that we expand upon every time we open our eyes in the morning. There are no certificates to be obtained for this kind of learning, no accredited institutions to attend, but surely we can recognise other rewards than these.
But the truth is, we do. Every day, the businessman who began his own company from scratch twenty years ago feels pride in all he has achieved. The tradesperson who has learned everything they know on the job, through the hard slog of working everyday has the satisfaction of knowing that they got themselves to the place they are today. Have these individuals worked any less than the young people who sit in classrooms every day, who write theoretical essays and perform experiments? Described in these terms, it seems foolish that we would value more an education earned in a safe, contrived space, to that earned first-hand, in the real working world.
And so it would seem that any institution prepared to acknowledge and reward such a hard won type of education would be welcomed with open arms. Institutions exist which award real world education with the pieces of paper that it seems are necessary in this world to gain business credibility. And they are the targets for the same criticism that life-educated individuals must endure.
Are college graduates so insecure that they must undermine an education than was earned in a different way to the one in which they achieved? Surely there can be room in this world to respect all types of education. People prove every day, in all walks of life, that success is not only for those with university qualifications. Malcolm S. Forbes said, 'the purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one.' If the value of an education earned through life experience cannot be recognised by supporters of university education, then surely it is the value of the latter that is brought into question.tp://www.degreeadvice.com
|
