Education: Game of Molds.

"Obama to propose free community college," the Headline Reads.

After browsing through a few more articles, Obama's "plan" is less of a plan and more of a "conversation starter" (as described by Obama's domestic policy adviser). If this loose wish eventually comes into fruition, we can all point to Obama and praise him. The more realistic outcome is that a dumbed-down version results and only 20-30% of community college applicants receive 40-60% of their tuition paid for. Politics, y'all.

Getting Educated On Education.

I finally finished schooling in May 2014 with 2 degrees and 25 years logged on Earth. If I live to 75 years old, I would've spent 1/3 of my life in school. Isn't that crazy? Isn't that a waste? 1/3 of anything is a huge chunk. Like I said, I know nothing about education, but I'd say 1/3 of my life spent towards education is too much time (and money) spent on education. Of those 25 years spent in school, I likely could've learned everything I did in 1/3 of that time: 8.33 years. So why's it take so long? 

Higher education is a business. Think about core-curriculum at your university. Think about how useless that stuff is, especially if you have a decent idea of what you might want to do. Do you really need TWO separate history courses? I remember one thing from my college history course: the route from my apartment to the classroom. I recall nothing substantive. And those two semesters cost me a few thousand, not to mention the time wasted.

Even law school. An American legal education is so blatantly a business. Law school most definitely does not need to be 3 years long, ask any law student. Heck, ask most professors. People think you finish law school and you're just good to go, able to tackle any legal issue. Your friends ask you about really specific laws, expecting a black/white answer, and you know how a law school graduate responds? "Well, it depends..." because you don't learn much actual law; you learn how to think, which is a very, very valuable thing. But it shouldn't take 3 years to get there. I recall sitting in half of my classes in my 3rd year of law school thinking, "what a complete waste of time." Where I went, you needed 90 credits to graduate, but only 40-50 hours were useful in my mind.

This is the greatest fault in our education system. There is no individualism. Think of education as a consumer product. Education is this massive product that mostly everyone feels like they need, or at least they're told this, and so it's mass produced. But with any product created on a huge scale, there are issues with quality control and customization. When you create something for the masses, corners are cut. To cut corners, molds are made. When there are molds, individuality suffers. And when individuality suffers, there is wasted time spent navigating a course that rarely takes you to the exact location you were searching for. Think of a mathematician at a state college who is required to spend 80% of her first 2 years taking courses like History, English, and Biology. This process sort of makes sense though, right? A good chunk of people enter college with absolutely no idea what to study, so they close their eyes and blindly choose something that sounds remotely interesting (more or less), maybe because that's what their friends chose, or their parents said it would be good for them. For these people, core curriculum is a decent place to start searching for direction. But for those who have a more focused idea on what they want, core curriculum is synonymous with throwing away hours and dollars. So who's to blame? How come so many 18 year olds entering college have no idea what they want? I was one of them. Well, it all comes back to molds and minimizing individuality. Our education system does very little to help us navigate all the varying avenues of possible vocations. And frankly, for the vast majority of us, our environments at home and in our communities likely do very little to usher us towards finding passions. I'm using passion here as a very general term with a low threshold. Passion merely means being interested enough in something to propel you to want to know more. Passion is curiosity, and curiosity may be the most crucial aspect lacking in American education.