Many of us were raised with the mindset that we need to study “to get a job”.
The reason people continue studies – an MBA or PhD – it’s usually with the intention of career progression.
Even when I got my PMP, chartered and professional engineer certifications, people questioned me, “why bother? It’s not like you get a pay raise anyway!”
This all boils down to a hollow, problematic mindset of today’s society: Knowledge is merely a tool to get money.
Which brings about a concerning, underlying subtext:
So, if we can have money without knowledge or qualifications, why bother learning?
Which perhaps explains why so many people, when they land a good job, they stop active learning - Unless it's a mandatory requirement, or for promotion. Again, money.
I recall recently having a conversation with an entrepreneurial-minded teenager who started his own business. When I started talking to him about school, he sounded dismissive, and said,
“To me, school isn’t really that important. In today’s world, we can succeed without education.”
This response concerns me. Especially when we look at today’s trends. Today, it’s very possible to be a wealthy “teen sensation” social media superstar at TikTok or YouTube. And alarmingly, many youths today genuinely consider these viral sensations as role models.
All of these are further strengthened by the narrative that some of the wealthiest, most ‘successful’ modern-day entrepreneurs are university dropouts: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg.
While we don’t doubt that these individuals have some degree of financial success, when we conveniently take these facts out of context, it subconsciously sends a dangerous, convenient message that Pink Floyd declared in '70s: “We don’t need no education”
Fundamentally, we need to change our attitude and have a serious paradigm shift: the purpose of knowledge isn’t just a tool to get rich.
Rather, I have another proposition:
The purpose of knowledge is to improve quality of life.
The pursuit of knowledge helps us challenges our skills, broadens our horizons. It adds meaning, purpose, and enrichment to our lives. Knowledge can guide us to become a better parent, a better child, a better leader, a better Muslim, a better human being. Ultimately, a better quality of life.
.. and wealth is just a means to that purpose. Just like qualifications and certificates.
As parents and educators, we also need to have a more holistic, mature view on the purpose of educational institutions such as school and university. These places aren’t only a factory to produce paper qualifications. They are wholesome training grounds for us to cultivate healthy learning habits, disciplined work schedules and regimented deadlines, groom presentation and communication skills, bring ideas together, challenge our abilities and develop self-confidence, conduct independent research within a guided framework, first-hand learning of manners, values, principles, and good character, as well as develop social interaction, collaboration, learning to cope with different personalities, and healthy competition as we would in the real world.
In other words, educational institutions are a closed control environment to teach life skills that prime us up to handle the real world.
Is it perfect? No, it isn’t. But it does provide a package of life skills that, if we are mindful of extracting the valuable gems, might just teach some useful elements to be successful in life.
Therefore, when we send our children to school, have these at the back of our minds, and what we want them to gain from that experience. And when we choose NOT to send them there and give them the freedom to choose otherwise, take ownership of what we are depriving them from.
Let’s all play our roles to rekindle the love for knowledge for the betterment of our lives and those around us.
And put an end to this mindset that knowledge is a mere tool to get rich.
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