Why Do People Do School - Essay Example

Why do we do school When I wrote this essay answering the question “Why do we do school?”, the most important reason I could think of was that we need to have a degree in hand to be eligible for jobs, which is why we do school. After taking this course, I have reached the conclusion that while the importance of schools in preparing students for the professional careers by awarding them degrees cannot be overemphasized, an equally important fact is that schools inculcate the necessary skills in students possessing which they can explore innovative ways of making money. Today, an individual does not necessarily require a degree to make money because the contemporary age is full of opportunities using which people can establish their own businesses and make much more money than what they can by becoming employed in other companies. However, doing business in the 21st century requires much more knowledge, and different kinds of talents and competencies that make it much more complex than what one needed to do business in the gone ages. Today, if a person has a lot of money granted to him by the parents but the person himself is not educated, it is quite likely that the person would be caught in the net of frauds laid by other smarter and more educated people. In the present age, it is even more important to have the skills to survive and thrive personally as well as as a businessman in a dynamic and increasingly multicultural society than to have money. Schools today serve the very purpose of inculcating these skills in the students in a whole range of ways e.g. by teaching them foreign languages, business administration and management, and advanced accounting techniques and softwares etcetera. Schools have proved their importance already by helping nations rise because of the quality of education imparted by them. “When the economies of Japan, Korea, Thailand, and other East Asian countries were growing at rates so fast that they were predicted to surpass the U.S. economy within short periods of time, the education system was often blamed for the nation’s seeming loss of competitive advantage” (Hanushek, n.d., p. 141). We do schools to grow intellectually as well as socially so that we can live a happy and prosperous life in the challenging environment of the contemporary age. In the highly competitive society of the present age, getting a degree from a school is only one of the factors that increase an individual’s chances of getting employed. There are thousands of people in the society who have the degrees and are still looking for job simply because the number of candidates is more than the number of jobs available. This imparts the need to find unique ways of earning money and draws the people towards entrepreneurship. With the availability of the Internet, the opportunities have grown tremendously. A considerable population of degree owners today is making money from online businesses of different kinds. They sell their products online, spread awareness among the people about their products and services using the social networking sites, and gradually grow their business to the point where they can even employ others. But this is not possible without schooling. In my school, in addition to taking the regular courses of the curriculum, there is a great deal of information that I have learnt about the use of computers and different kinds of softwares. My learning process was facilitated by the availability of skilled and competent friends in the school in addition to the teachers from whom I learnt computer operating and programming. Today, I can think of countless ways of establishing online business, and I fundamentally attribute this creative thinking ability to my schooling. In my schooling, I have gained much more than just education. “Role of a school is to develop raw child to perfect” (sadashivan_nair.tripod.com, n.d.). School has lent me my own identity as an individual. I don’t think I would be as much confident and at ease at socializing with people from different cultures, races, ethnicities, and nationalities as I am today had I not joined the school. In my school, I have had the opportunity to socialize and make friends with people from all sorts of backgrounds. Being with them and studying with them on daily basis provided me with a comprehensive insight into their cultures that I could never have had I never joined the school no matter how many television programs, documentaries, or movies about different cultures I saw. In the present age, one thing that is growing rapidly is social networking at all levels both in the virtual world and in the physical world. Without social networking, it gets very hard for an individual to excel in today’s society because social networks are an individual’s fundamental source of information and support. Having done school, I have not only been able to make friends from all across the globe, but also have learnt about the norms and values of their respective cultures. This is very important because people who are not aware of others’ norms and cultures can offend them without even intending so. A very important reason that we do school that I could not think of while writing the first essay is that schools help clarify ambiguities for us. Sitting at our homes, we tend to associate negative perceptions with education whenever we come across a theory conflicting with our biblical beliefs. “[I]n a nation where evangelical Protestantism and other religious traditions stress a literal reading of the biblical description of God’s individuality creating each species, students often arrive at school fearing that evolution, and perhaps science itself, is hostile to their faith” (Harmon, 2008). It is only through schooling that I have learnt that science evolves with theories. Theories are not necessarily true. In fact, they are called as theories because they can be doubted, and are not proven facts. “Making meaning is different from discovering knowledge. The former originates inside the learner (subjective), and the latter originates outside and is discovered (objective)” (Bull, 2002, p. 162). So to come across a theory that challenges my religious faith does not mean that education as a whole is something that distracts me from following my religion in any way. There is always another theory that contradicts a theory. It is through schooling that we get to clear such doubts and endorse science which in turn helps us optimize on our potential to create knowledge. Another very important reason we do school is that schools prepare us for the challenges lying ahead because the challenges in a multicultural workplace are to a large extent the same as the challenges in a multicultural classroom. In schools, principals have to deal with such issues as how to accommodate the students’ religious, cultural, and ethnic needs. “As America becomes more religiously diverse, more schools will be faced with these challenges” (Chmelynski, 2004, p. 38). Students learn from the way schools deal with such challenges, and are thus better prepared to make informed decisions in the practical life about these sensitive and extremely important matters. I had discussed most of the points that I have also discussed in this paper in my first essay, but at that time, I was not very sure about my thinking. At that time, those were my ideas. Having taken this course, those ideas have become my concepts and beliefs. This course has inculcated this confidence in me that schooling was indeed the best service my parents could ever provide me with because they have put me into a position where I can think creatively and using my knowledge and resources, can find unique ways of making money. In addition to that, school has shaped my personality and has helped me become the person I am today. Most of the concepts about life, this journey, and the world that I have today would not be the same had I never gone to school. School provided me with an opportunity to grow not only as a student, but also as a responsible citizen so that I play a constructive role in the society. To conclude, this course provided me with a comprehensive insight into the role of schooling in shaping our personalities, our skills, and our lifestyle as a whole, that makes me say that I would have been a completely different person had I not joined the school, and most probably, I would be far less smarter, talented, qualified, and capable in that case than I am now. I feel very lucky to belong to a country where a lot of emphasis is placed on the schooling of children and the government provides the parents with all kinds of facilities and opportunities to ensure that no child is left uneducated. This course not only strengthened my beliefs that I had expressed in my first essay, but also added a lot to my knowledge and I have started to believe in the power of school-education more than ever before. References: Bull, B. F. (2002). Constructive Crap in Christian Colleges: The Indoctrination of Teacher Education. The Education Forum. 66, 162-164. Chmelynski, C. (2004). NCLB Lenient on Students’ Nondisruptive Religious Practices. School Board News. Retrieved from http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/recordDetail?accno=EJ740570. Hanushek, E. A. (n.d.). The Importance of School Quality. Hoover Press: Peterson/Schools. Harmon, A. (2008, Aug. 23). A Teacher on the Front Line as Faith and Science Clash. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/education/24evolution.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0. sadashivan_nair.tripod.com. (n.d.). "poverty" a subject: role of a school. Retrieved from http://sadashivan_nair.tripod.com/quotpovertyquotasubject/id5.html. Read More