Nowadays, it is said that graduation does not give anything. Recruiters pay more attention to skills than to diplomas. However, I believe that school is needed. The only problem is that we expect from the school what it cannot give us.
“School teaches things that we don’t need.”
This is a common argument of people who believe that school does not give anything. I fully agree with them. The school does not teach. This is easy to verify. It is enough to try to answer a few questions from any subject from primary or secondary school to see empirically that we do not remember much or nothing of what we learned. I remember from high school that the Professor of Biology promised that for the rest of my life I would know what mitosis and meiosis were. All I remember is that these are two ways of cell division and that they are fundamentally different from each other. What? I don’t remember. So I have hard evidence that school doesn’t teach knowledge. So why did I start studying at an IT technical school? About this a little further.
If the school doesn’t teach, how do people gain knowledge? The results of scientific research leave no shadow of a doubt. Man learns through practice. We have to do the things we want to learn on our own, and then repeat them many times to remember. Initially, neural pathways need to be created in the brain. Such paths are formed the fastest when we engage as many senses as possible in learning. That is why we learn the fastest through practice. Later, neural pathways should be fixed, also through action. Otherwise, they will be replaced by other paths, and we will forget what we have learned. Knowing how our brain works, we know that learning at school will never be effective. Only practice and the search for knowledge on our own can effectively teach us new things.
So why school?
Despite the fact that school does not effectively teach us new knowledge, I believe that school is needed. However, I have slightly different requirements for learning at school. I don’t mean that I learned to program in a technical school. I will do it myself much faster and more effectively. However, I will not gain a broader perspective on my own. This is not possible, because the first step to acquiring new knowledge and skills is to have information that some area of knowledge exists at all. I can’t learn something I’ve never heard of in my life, because I don’t even know it exists. This is where the school comes in handy. At school, you gain information about what elements make up a complete picture of your area of interest. You will not learn the material from the whole area, but you will gain knowledge that such elements exist, and only then, if necessary, will you deepen your knowledge of the area.
Precisely for this reason, I enrolled in a technical school, and probably after the technical school, I will enroll in studies. I want to have a general idea of the entire IT area, and improve my programming skills in detail.
There is one more plus of the school. You meet people with similar interests. It’s unusual, but the truth is that you develop much faster in the environment of people who support you. What’s more, you can inspire each other together. Many times in history, people have proven that teamwork is much more effective than working alone. When we work on an issue in a group class, time disappears and solutions appear like rabbits out of a hat. Everyone finds their own area in which they support the others and we are able to solve problems that in the case of independent work cause a jam for a long time.
Summary
I recommend high school or college, but not to gain knowledge, but to meet people and broaden your horizons. This always pays off in the future.