SCHOOL OF HARD KNOCKS
Most 16-year-olds don’t know what they want to do with their lives.
Nor do most 17 and 18-year-olds. And I suspect many university students haven’t identified their calling by the time they declare their majors.
These are not original thoughts, but they sum up why I think it’s a mistake to require kids to narrow their options as soon as they enter high school and commit to specific fields of study when they start A-levels. That’s the way it works in Botswana, the UK, and most other western countries where students are usually encouraged to chase grades instead of simply seek knowledge.
I watched a tv programme the other day that highlighted this problem… and I’m talking about this now because the show reminded me of an alternative approach. The programme’s subject was a straight A student who dropped out of an Italian university during her first semester because she was not interested in any of the classes.
She bummed around Europe for a few years, sleeping outside, and making enough money to survive by busking with a ukulele. But when she got pregnant and needed to raise a child on her own, her mum and dad helped her buy a cabin on the edge of a clear-cut forest in Sweden.
At that point, she found a purpose and applied her mind to getting by on as little money as possible. She foraged for food, raided dumpsters, and used YouTube lessons to learn how to build most of what she needed from materials she could find for free.
That’s the picture the show painted using flashbacks from the original episode that was filmed four years ago. She came across as very intelligent, but at that time, it appeared she may have been wasting her potential. But in the current footage of New Lives in the Wild, that did not appear to be the case… and she seemed to be happy with her life, her son, and her new partner.
She had brought running water and solar electricity to her home, she had learned a wide range of do-it-yourself skills, and at the age of 28, she had discovered what she wanted to do: study to become an electrician and then set up a company to help others use solar panels to power their homes. So, now she wants to go back to school.
The programme reminded me of the education model Robert Prisig promotes in his autobiographical novel, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. His main character is a university professor who wants to abolish grades from his English classes so students will be forced to work towards gaining knowledge instead of simply competing for high marks.
He acknowledges that system would lead to many students losing interest and dropping out, but he argues that would be a good thing. It would save everyone a lot of money, force the students to get an education in the school of hard knocks, and encourage some of them to develop a yearning for knowledge.
And at that point, even if it’s five, ten, or more years later, the former students would be welcomed back into the education system... and no one would need to force them to study.