While watching an interesting YouTube video about the potential for AI writing the presenter made a comment I found intriguing. What is the point of an education? Why do we go to school? In this case, the question involved university education. Why did you go to college? What do we tell people is the purpose of going to college?
I wanted to look at it from the broader perspective of education as a whole and why it’s valuable to not only me but to society.
Money
Money is the heart of the issue from the presenter’s perspective. Going to college has become largely a mathematical equation. Will I spend as much money on my education as it provides me in salary over the course of my career? The point of education is to get a well-paying job. That’s why people go to college and, to some degree, why they go to school at all.
There is no question about the financial value of an education. The further a person goes in college directly effects how much money she or he make in a career. It’s obviously not a direct correlation as some people who get higher degrees make little or no money while some who don’t get degrees make enormous sums. It’s just a general statement that people who get higher degrees make more on average than people who do not.
Calvin to the Rescue
The Calvin and Hobbes comic that I’ve chosen to illustrate this article pretty well sums it all up. Learning is fun. Reading is fun. Not only is learning fun but it’s enormously satisfying. Learning something new, something you didn’t know, gives us a warm feeling inside. We humans like it. That is the point of education. It’s personally satisfying and fun.
Yes, it also helps us navigate the world. Reading, writing, mathematics, and all the other topics do allow us to participate meaningfully in society, to get jobs, to earn money. That’s all true. But the real value in education is the personal satisfaction we get from learning.
Money isn’t Bad
Whenever I write an article of this nature, I feel it necessary to take a moment to explain I’m not against making money. I’m not against a job that provides you with a good salary so you can purchase the things you need and desire. Money isn’t bad, it’s just not the point of education. It’s the side-effect.
We’ve Murdered Education
By making money and earnings the main focus of education, we’ve murdered it. It’s not fun. We don’t enjoy it. We’re always looking at the bottom line instead of joyfully opening a book to learn about something new.
We’re raising generation after generation that values money above all us. Decency. Kindness. Fairness. Learning. Those things are not as important as money.
It’s destroying the world, one greedy monster at a time. Just look around at who is revered. And, for just a brief moment, stop and question why your knee-jerk reaction to reading this was to tell me I’m stupid and wrong.
Tom Liberman