Why study carding all your life: we understand the meaning of education and self-education

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Many of us have asked our parents at least once in our lives: "Why do you need to study?" Perhaps someday such a question will overtake you, because children, as a rule, do not strive for knowledge, they are more interested in abstract affairs and not related to study. What do you think - what's the point in the education process? Do you need to learn and how do you feel about the concept of lifelong learning? Leave your comments, but first, let's figure it out together - what is the meaning of education?

First of all, I would like to start with seemingly contradictory stories related to successful, but poorly educated people. These people include:

Ingvar Kapmprad​

The founder of the largest company IKEA has always enjoyed positive reviews from his close friends and acquaintances, however, as the entrepreneur himself argued, he is a dropout. In reality, Ingvar did not have a higher education, but already in childhood, the boy was selling Christmas tree decorations, stationery, even fish.

Henry Ford​

The famous automobile industrialist ran away from home at the age of 16, moved to Detroit and started working as an engineer for the Edison Illuminating Company. As noted by many analysts, Henry Ford was distinguished by the gift of a genius manager along with engineering skills.

Roman Abramovich​

Russian oligarch and statesman in 1983 entered the Ukhta Industrial Institute at the forestry faculty. However, he did not have a special craving for study, as a result of which he did not graduate from the university. At the same time, his organizational skills are noted, the ability to make useful contacts, which partly became the reason for a successful business with super-profits.

Michael Dell​

The founder of Dell Computers has become one of the richest people on the planet with no higher education. Already at the age of eight, the future businessman gave up the desire to graduate from high school, not to mention studying at a university - there were already plenty of plans for life.

All these people were able to achieve great success without having a higher education, but, analyzing the stories reviewed, each successful person can be noted for purposefulness, ideology and possession of good communication and organization skills. The relevance of these qualities is not lost today, but the presence of a diploma of higher education, as a determining factor in hiring, is being questioned more and more often. Let's try to understand whether it is necessary to learn or not.

First, let's agree on the division of education itself into two types:

• academic (training, involving classes in high school, at a university, obtaining a large amount of theoretical material and information);
• practical (training aimed at obtaining some specific skills, abilities).

The philosophy of academic learning is as follows: “I need to master, learn certain material in order to pass the exam. I will get a diploma, I will be able to work and earn money ", while the philosophy of practical training is different:" I need to learn this in order to apply my knowledge in practice, to get some specific material result. "

Analyzing the characteristics of both types of training, one can be inclined to believe that the second type (practical training) is more productive, useful and rational. In principle, examples of success prove this. But it turns out that academic education also has a number of advantages. We propose to consider them.

Self-discipline​

Of course, everyone, without exception, has to fight procrastination, laziness and unwillingness to work hard and for a long time, but the learning process largely spurs us on and forces us to do homework, read books, solve problems, etc.

Development of thinking​

In fact, most schoolchildren (and adults as well) think that it is completely useless to solve integrals at school if you are interested in biology, or read The Master and Margarita if you want to become a programmer. But in fact, we are forced to do this not because this knowledge will certainly be useful to us, but in order to develop certain skills that, in fact, are needed by every educated person.

Mathematics gives the ability to think logically and rationally, literature - literacy, the ability to be an interesting interlocutor and express your point of view, history trains memory and makes a person erudite, physical culture takes care of health and elementary training, etc. That is, each object, even without being necessary for you, to one degree or another reveals the facets of your personality, allows you to look at the world with a clearer and more open look.

Development of erudition for the purpose of authority​

Agree, it is quite prestigious to be a reading, interested person today. If you do not know what is the difference between the Great Patriotic War and the Second World War, then the interlocutors will not consider you an educated person, but such basic knowledge is acquired already at school. Therefore, it is worth studying at least for the appearance of your own authority in the eyes of the people around you.

The ability to assess the situation from a different point of view​

As already mentioned, thanks to training, you look at the world more clearly, from different angles, and this gives a fundamentally important ability - to put yourself in the place of another person, to imagine what he is experiencing and what feelings and thoughts may now visit him. It turns out that to some extent, learning develops empathy, which, undoubtedly, will help any person in life (this is especially influenced by literature, where we get to know a large number of different characters).

As you can see, academic education is aimed mainly at expanding the framework with which our consciousness is naturally constrained. Studying the rules and laws of life helps us to gain some kind of conscious freedom, as well as in a certain sense to overcome ourselves. Nevertheless, today, practical training is of particular importance, because trends in the labor market are changing, society is rapidly progressing, which leads to the formation of new professions and skills. Let's highlight some of these trends.

Development of the freelance sector​

According to statistics, about 35% of the entire working population in the United States is employed as freelancers, and 78% of Britons believe that freelancing is the best solution to the work-life balance problem.

The age of in-demand skills​

Due to the fact that most of the population tends to freelance, a person needs to constantly acquire new skills that will provide him with additional competitiveness, to distinguish him from other freelancers.

Brand "I"​

Every person in the modern world becomes, in some sense, a commodity. We learn to position ourselves, show ourselves from the right side, acquire useful and demanded skills, and all this in order to sell the “I” product for a more expensive price, to find a job with the possibility of good career growth.

Extra education​

In the modern world, it is important not to dwell on the first education, which is actually depreciated by employers in employment, because they increasingly declare that they do not care about a diploma. What's important? Initiative, additional certificates, completed courses, real skills, competitions, that is, what characterizes you as a person striving for self-education and additional training.

Population aging​

It would seem that the trend associated with an aging population is purely demographic, but it directly affects the labor market. Raising the retirement age, the working population expands at the expense of those who are younger than the new retirement age limits, respectively, the life cycle of one worker increases, and time is not worth it, as you know. Therefore, people of age have to retrain, gain new competencies.

Incidentally, this information is confirmed by statistics from the World Labor Organization (WTO), namely:

• the average age of a worker worldwide in 10 years will increase to 41;
• in 10 years, two young workers will work for one pensioner (and not three, as it is now).

One simple thought follows from the above tendencies: you need to learn. Undoubtedly. And the concept of lifelong education (life-long education), which implies constant development and improvement, expanding the list of mastered competencies, improving qualifications and acquiring new skills, is especially relevant today .

Moreover, today every person has the opportunity to "educate themselves" without leaving home, to learn a lot of useful information while sitting in front of the screen. This will help educational platforms such as Khan Academy, Udemy, Coursera, OpenEdu, School 21 (School 21) and others. We recommend that you visit one of the platforms and find something to your liking. This will allow you to significantly improve your competitiveness in the labor market.

Also, an additional step on the way to mastering teaching methods can be our online program "Best Self-Education Techniques", where in 5 weeks you will learn how to apply models and techniques of self-education in order to increase your own productivity.

You can also learn a lot of interesting and useful things (in particular, the most popular and demanded professions of the future, the necessary competencies and the possibility of obtaining them) from the video with Natalia Moiseenko, General Director of the Theory and Practice Development Platform:

Based on the forecasts of the BOT, in the near future, among all the competencies of the employee, critical thinking will be in the first place in importance, which, mind you, is developed through a successful combination of both academic and practical training. Therefore, do not be lazy, fight against “procrastination”, try to work at school and university not for grades, but for your future, take an interest, be proactive and open to new things, fight cognitive distortions, capitalize your personality.

And yet, at the beginning of the article, we gave a small (and certainly not complete) list of people who managed to achieve great success without resorting to the services of higher education. In the end, I would like to emphasize just the opposite.

Now you are sitting in front of the screen of your gadget, which was developed by a group of programmers who have hardly completed at least programming courses. You are sitting in a room that was designed by architects and built by a team of builders. You may be drinking coffee, which is the result of the work of food technologists, and before them - farmers. You are wearing clothes made according to certain calculations, patterns and technologies. Everything around you at this moment contains the result of labor. So dare, be curious, and be creative. Then laziness will fade into the background, and life will become more interesting.

We wish you every success!