I recently read a blog post written by this guy I met a few weeks ago. Click Here for the original post. His article was really interesting and it really stirred me, intellectually. In his blog post he asserts two things (1) Having a formal education is not indicative of your intellectual ability nor status and (2) True education springs from the individual and is usually nurtured by outside forces; knowledge is not necessarily poured into, as widely assumed by this socio-educational paradigm.
I’m going to take this discussion a little bit further by looking at it from a different perspective. In this discussion I will be exploring the relationship between formal education, financial success, and the love for learning; my perspective of the three and the role it has played in my life.
Growing up, I was taught that being a scholar was synonymous with being financialy free, which by no surprise, was my definition of success. Basically, the more information you knew via a formal education, the more successful you would become. In my world, it was The Law. From my own experience so far, however, I found this to be false. If you don’t know, I hold a Bachelor’s of Science in Psychology and I am an honorary member of Broke Phi Broke Sorority Inc. Meaning, I am broke, no money, poor, destitute, insolvent, ok, you get the picture. I am stuck with this big fancy degree and nothing to show for it but an oversized piece of paper with my name and couple of signatures on it.
Now don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with getting a degree. I just think that right now, the rules of the success game has changed, and it is simply time for us to go back to the drawing board and figure out how exactly are we to win this “game”. Like Mrs. Obama said in a recent interview on the NBC’s “Today’s Show” [super-paraphrased] “The days of holding a job for 20 years are over. It is time for us to build our skills and compete in that fashion”
This brings me to the next part of this discussion: The love for learning. I have always been a lover of learning new things, for a while I didn’t know I really was until a witch of a high school teacher of mine gave me a cute little pin that said, “I love education, but it just has to stop!” Back then I abhorred that teacher. She only smiled with those who made “A’s”—those who she thought would be the “successful” people in life. Of course, I mad far less than “A’s” and I hardly made it to her list of successful people. After reading that pin, I felt like she had only given me that pin to undermine my intelligence. In retrospect though, that was how I felt; I loved to learn, but I hated institutionalized education with a passion. Every since I could remember, I’ve had a burning desire to learn more. Though-out high school and college, I read as much as I could and dabbled in as much hobbies as I could. I played the clarinet; I did a lot of sketching and now occasionally I dabble in acrylic painting; I’m dabbling in HTML and an array of other hobbies. I was striving to be, and still is striving to become the “Renaissance Man”, like the next black, female version of Leonardo De’Vince! Ok, maybe it’s a bit of stretch, but why not dream big?.
Now, did I ever consider myself a scholar? Absolutely not. How could I? After all, a scholar was one who made straight A’s, went to college and ended up with great jobs. And of course that wasn’t me, at all. Did I consider myself a relatively smart girl? Well, of course! Was my intellectual ability nurtured during formal education is the true question. To answer simply, no. In my opinion, anything I know now is a result of my natural intellectual ability and self discipline. Whether I had gone to school or not, I think I would still have the same intellectual caliber simply because of my love for learning.
What then is the true spirit of education? When I was in school what bothered me most were grades and standardized tests. I never thought they were accurate measures of intellect. I have met far too many educated fools in my life time. They the core of their haughtiness was found there good grades and high test scores, but still didn’t have that street-smart sensibility to relate to individuals on multiple levels of competencies. This leads me to believe that, holding a degree is not indicative of intellectual ability.
I will conclude that in essence the true spirit of education lies in the hands of the individual. True education is having a hunger for learning without the restraints of achievement and monetary motivation.
As grow older I am learning more and more that I am a free thinker, an artist if you will. Unfortunate for me, for a while I thought there was something wrong with me. Thanks be to God, I am growing into my quirky humor and undeniable awkwardness of my out-of-space thought. I love it. Although I was forced to put on thinking restraints and never was handed the opportunity to think and act freely, it hasn’t affected my here and now. Yes, I love to learn. Yes, I want to be financially free and successful; if it takes another degree or learning another skill, then so let it be. I know one thing’s for sure: from here on out, I will let the spirit of true education have free reign in my life. Never again will I allow grades, test scores, number of degrees or any such restrain to define my level of intellectual ability or predictor of success.
My goal is to be a life long learner. Nuff said.
Thanks for joining me
~Jay
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