School may have been overshadowed by the information age but it still plays a major role in the society. The only flaw with schooling is they provide the fundamentals about a particular knowledge and seldom do provide information and skills in that particular knowledge.
Let me explain. In my school, we were taught what bookkeeping was, the concepts and the terms, we did double entry systems. However, they never told us there is software that does that and how we can get them and probably use them. they never told us how to apply it in real life scenarios.
There are four basic steps in learning
Fundamentals: which talks about the terms and concepts of a particular knowledge
Information: which shows the how, where and when a piece of knowledge is applied
Skills: which allows the application of information gotten from the knowledge to real-life scenarios.
Innovation: which arms the learner with tools necessary for research in other to solve problems that are solvable.
In the past, the school was a one-stop shop for acquiring knowledge. Because they had experts (teachers and professors) who are knowledgeable in that area of study and have made a research about the study.
However, with the advancements in technology that doesn't seem to be the case since we are in the information era. We can find knowledge everywhere and anywhere we look, in social media, online courses, blogs even tv shows. They all provide us with knowledge which is much more easier convenient to access with little or no cost at all. No wonder people advice against going to school making statements such as "school is a scam". Sometimes I am forced to believe because if you check the number of years spent in learning a particular profession and compare how long it takes for a sales boy with no knowledge in sales to learn sales from his master and open up his own store... hmm...
After careful considerations, I came to understand the importance of school and came to dismiss the theory of school being a scam as a theory for people who waste their time to go through school without picking up the fundamentals. Honestly, they should have gone and served a rich master.
With the information age, it is kind of worst because there is so much information that it is hard to filter through. A good example is searching for a particular knowledge on the internet which brings up tons of result. Now, which article or blog or publisher is right about the topic and how relevant is the search result to the topic. After studying the topic what comes next. If there is a question about the topic who should I ask. How can I show proof that I have mastered this topic
School carefully solves this by providing professors or teachers who have basic or fundamentals about a piece of knowledge. they prepare a road map which students get to follow in other to be experts in that field of knowledge. School provides support for students who need to ask questions pertaining to the knowledge and getting in-depth answers. The school makes the student an expert in that particular field of study. By providing students with certifications, the school helps companies during hiring to filter suitable skills for the job.
Although there are areas which all schools might need to improve on which is to provide information and skills needed by employees to students. As these skills are lacking due to students being only book worms in that particular field but lack the skills to apply it to the real world. Although there are other vocational schools that provide such services, I will recommend it should be applied to all areas of schooling
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