Toolkit

Every time you read about any of the famous scientists of old, you read about their studies with their mentor(s). I always have this image of someone immersing himself in the work he does with his mentor, who invests much of his time teaching his student all he knows. I rarely ever picture what we now know as formal education. Most times I wish I could have the sort of intellectual relationship they had back then rather than the kind of education we get today.

It just feels much more personal, tailored to your specific needs. It also sounds much more interesting than our current state of trying to survive going from assignment to assignment and test to test. For a person that spends much of her time thinking about education, I must say the current system we use isn't without its flaws. However, I am here to argue that we simply cannot do away with formal education. Indeed we should improve upon it, but we cannot abandon it completely; we should not. Today postgraduate study towards a PhD does follow the mentoring framework, but of course a person must get through over 15 years of formal education in order to get there.

So here is why I think formal education should never cease to exist and should remain (with certain flexibility) to be mandatory.

There are many careers out there, each requiring varying skill sets. Clearly, we cannot prepare all school students for all the jobs available in the market. On the other hand, it would not be fair to focus their education on a certain subject or another. We see that if our formal schooling system is to persist and be effective, a middle ground must be reached. But is this not what our schools attempt (badly) to do? Unless a child knows at age five what he truly likes doing (which he doesn't), we can say that at least for young children, formal education works quite well. If done properly that is.

Jumping ten years into the future. The child is now about to graduate from high school. He thinks he's fairly certain he knows what he wants to do (in some instances). Say, he wants to work in game design. He's into animation and would like to create amazing worlds for his characters to explore. He realizes he also needs to know a fair amount of computer programming (which in my ideal schooling system he would've learned), some math, and possibly some physics. His art and music courses would help him develop the mood he wants for his games. Some creative writing wouldn't hurt to ensure a decent plot line either. He realizes he already knows the basics of everything he needs to make it to his dream job.

Now that was just me trying to think of the ideal situation that would somehow prove my point. Maybe not all jobs like that. Probably not. You can be a musician and claim that chemistry isn't ever going to help you with your musical career. Oh, but it might? You can be a mathematician that simply abhors the language of shakespeare. Certainly this could happen. However today we live in a world where the distinction between fields isn't entirely defined. I've taken a course about music with a computer scientist (who is a drummer and does research in the field). Such interdisciplinary work is hard to do (or begin to think of) if you don't have the background in other fields. Today's world is all about connecting all the different disciplines. This is how you innovate. The courses that are directly related to your field the least may end up inspiring your own work.

Perhaps back in the day you would get a degree in, perhaps psychology, and you would go on to become a psychologist. You could work in the exact same field as your degree, and all would be safe and happy. The same thing wouldn't necessarily happen today. 

In any case, would you not agree that a little background in each subject would be beneficial? For indeed that is where innovation begins. You cannot think outside the box if all your knowledge is confined to your small box. Many a breakthrough has been made by collaboration across various fields. I will refrain from giving examples here, simply because the best one I know of will either turn out incomprehensible to most or horribly explained (which would also be incomprehensible). I can tell you however, than 90% of medical imaging technology comes from physics. And I'm not talking biophysics here. The medical applications would have been long delayed if people didn't have the background to consider medical uses for their discoveries. 

Many artists these days incorporate science and technology in their works, whether by directly employing scientific methods in the production of their artwork, or by using science as inspiration for their artwork. CERN (the largest physics laboratory in Europe and home of the LHC that discovered the Higgs boson two years ago) recently started an artist residency project. The artworks that result from this interesting intersection are, well, interesting and unconventional (as you would expect). The first of these artist residents was a choreographer, with some of his science-inspired work found here (starting at 41:00). I don't know about you, but I would surely welcome unconventional artwork. I'm pretty certain that is what contemporary art is all about. How unconventional can you possibly get if all you know is confined to your specific field?

You could say that, well I can learn something if I wanted to later on. I would tell you that you could. Except that it would be very much harder. And you will never be as good at it as you would've been if you'd learned it at a younger age. Why do world class musicians always start at a very young age? Would you have been able to speak your mother tongue as good as you do if you'd learned it half way through your life. We all know its best to start early. So what's wrong with learning a whole set of things at young age? 

You never really know what the world has in store for you, is it not best to be prepared? If you're at all familiar with the adventure genre, be it books or movies or video games, you know that no one ever sets out on an expedition ill prepared. Your life is an expedition into the unknown, so pick up as many skills as you can garner. Diversify your toolkit. You never know what may come in handy.

I say this to the many people that think they have a passion for one thing and one thing only. And want to do that thing exclusively. You might think you do, but you really don't. And there are upsides to formal education.

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