Recently I was talking with some friends about education. You know, as friends do. Ok, as nerdy friends do.
As someone who has experienced a lot of education and has worked for several years in the field of education, I have a lot of thoughts about education. A lot.
But this one is not about homeschool versus private school versus public school. Plenty of people are having that conversation. I have thoughts there too. And it is an important conversation.
But something almost no one seems to talk about is this: many people end their education just when it is starting to get interesting.
Our earliest experiences with education are necessarily general. Everyone needs to learn the alphabet, how to write, how to cut with scissors, how to spell. Everyone needs to learn the basics of math, history, government, and so on. And as one of my friends pointed out, going through the process of learning, even if it is something you may never use again like advanced math, going through the process of learning it changes you. And that’s a good thing.
But many people finish their education - whether at the end of high school or at the end of a college degree (whether an associates or a bachelors) - thinking (or saying) ‘I’m so glad that’s over!’
But here is the unfortunate thing about that: the further you go in your education, the more interesting it gets!
Now this is true whether we are talking about formal education (through a college or seminary or something) or informal education (through books, lectures, conferences, etc.).
Let’s take formal education first. We’ve already established that our early education is necessarily general. Toward the end of high school it can get a little more specific with some choice of electives. (Maybe you really love advanced math or physics, or maybe you love making more and more sophisticated things in shop class, or maybe by your senior year you became a soloist in the choir or the lead in the play.) But you still have to take all the other stuff you may not be interested in. (Maybe you are bored to death by history or English. Or maybe you are counting down the days until you never have to take another math class.) All of this is understandable, but for many it leaves a bad taste in their mouth regarding education. You come to think of education as having to do and learn all these things you don’t care about.
But if you continue your formal education beyond high school, you will get to be more selective about what you study. You get to choose a major. You will likely have more electives. There will still be some things you have to take that you are not terribly interested in, but the majority will be subjects that in some sense you have chosen.
[As a side note here, you may discover that subjects you did not think you liked are now quite fascinating. Maybe your taste has changed. Maybe you have not yet had a teacher in that subject who was a good fit for you. Or maybe the subject comes alive in new ways for you when taught not just by a capable teacher but by an expert in the field. For my part, I loved math and science in high school and tolerated history and English. In college that flipped. I hit my limit quickly with math and science but absolutely loved history and English.]
Plenty of people make it this far. And that is no small feat. It takes a lot to make it this far. A lot of patience and perseverance and a lot of support from others.
But if you could just take one step further and go for a master’s degree (most of them are 1-2 years, much shorter than a bachelors degree), you would find not only that most, if not all, of your classes are now directly related to what you are interested in. And the people you are in class with are interested in the same things you are.
This gets ratcheted up four-fold or more in a doctoral program where you are equipped to dig as deep as you can stand into something that fascinates you while studying alongside others who who digging deep in the same mine, just in a slightly different nook.
Now I know that for many this seems daunting, if not downright impossible. So let’s look at it from a different angle. Informal education.
Informal education refers to all the learning you do that is not directed toward a diploma or a degree. Reading books, listening to lectures (like The Great Courses), reading articles, going to conferences, visiting museums, historical sites, and more all count as informal education.
My lament about so many leaving education behind before they have learned to enjoy it is that so many neglect to pursue this informal education because they had such a lackluster experience in their formal education.
How many of us read (or didn’t read) an assigned book in high school that we did not like at all only to try it again years later and discover it is actually quite good? But how many more never try it again? And how many more rarely try reading much of anything because they never enjoyed what they were compelled to read?
The great thing about informal education is no one is telling you what to read or learn. You can decide you enjoy learning about a certain period of history, or a certain skill or craft, and read and listen to anything that catches your eye on that topic. Maybe you can’t play a lick of music but you want to know why classical music is so moving. So you find one of the Great Courses on classical music, watch videos of great concerts, videos of explanations, whatever you can find. Who cares if anyone ever gives you a degree for it? If you are enjoying it and your life is being enriched by it, that makes it worthwhile.
I guess this is a long way of saying that I wish our approach to education did a better job at shaping people into life-long-learners by shaping them into lovers of learning. I would argue that a diploma or a degree paired with a distaste for learning is not nearly as valuable as a love for learning, degree or no degree. Because if someone loves to learn, and has not quit learning, there is no end to what they might be able to do if given a little time and opportunity.
I remember the day you called from
College excited about a poem! I was shocked. The change from math and science to literature was definitive and it started a love for learning that is going strong today.
That was great.