Unlearning Your Learning

Recently, I stumbled across an article on Forbes called “Nine Dangerous Things You Were Taught in School”. The article discussed different scenarios that would be working against you in the real life world. Reading through them, I noticed a few of the childhood sayings I had once heard as a child. Let’s see if you can relate to any of the sayings.

1. “Your superiors are in charge and always have the right answers.” From day one, you learn to listen to your parents (they are always right), listen to your teachers (they are always right), listen to your principal, a police officer, bus driver, older adult in general etc. The list goes on and on. However, being a mindless vessel to someone else’s ideas is not always the way to go. Questioning authority does appear sometime in life and schools really should take the time to explain how to handle that situation when it arises.
2. “Learning ends when you leave the classroom.” I remember this saying vividly. Looking back on it, I couldn’t disagree more. Your learning new things each and every day whether its dark clothes will bleed their color onto white clothes so you should wash them separately or that some people will never understand what it means to put the toilet seat down. Yes, a lot of your school education does help you out a lot but, learning how to make friends is not taught in a history book.
3. “There is only one path to success and that is called college.” Apparently, if you just keep getting grades all through school success, money  and happiness will just gracefully plop itself in your lap. Once again, this another one that is almost entirely not true. Having a college degree doesn’t mean anything if you don’t have the drive to go out and get internships, make connections, and find a career that fits you. Also, college is not always the answer for everyone. Cosmotology school, Trade School, Tech School or in some cases no school and just building your way through a company are some of the other options that many people choose besides college.
4. “The only purpose of your education is to get a good career that will make lots of money.” Many, and I mean many, degrees in college will not make $400,000+ a year. Most of the time, people are choosing careers because it is something they love to do. For example, the teachers that tell us this advice barely make $50,000 a year. They teach because it is the career they wanted to do even if they did use 8 years worth of salary to pay off student debts.

Just remember when giving advice, it’s not always so black and white. Let us know if you have heard any of this advice, whether it turned out to be true, or any other advice you would like to add!