5 myths about life taught in universities

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Let's be honest: apart from a few good friends, a number of interesting acquaintances, student parties and the ability to make cribs and take notes, the domestic education system gives nothing. You spend 4-5-6 years at a university and leave with a diploma in one hand and a whole bag of illusions and high expectations in the other. It is lucky if you have a job for a year or two by the time you graduate (otherwise you will face unrealistically high competition in the labor market and the inability to get a job in a more or less decent place, unless you go to conquer a million-plus city or the capital of your / foreign country). And the teachers of our universities, out of habit, "hammer" into the heads of students a bunch of theory, which 90% will never be applied anywhere + also "supply" them with 5 harmful myths that have nothing to do with reality.

"The best students achieve the best results": this myth works more or less when it comes to the grades in your class. Outside the walls of universities, it does not mean anything. Do you know where 4 of the 5 best students in our course ended up in a year or two after graduating from the magistracy? That's right - without work. Of these 5 people, only 1 (if I'm not mistaken) is now working in their specialty. There is no correlation between "fives" (or "100 points", as was the case with our university) and success in life outside the "alma mater" does not exist. There is only a connection between persistence, the ability to use even an unfavorable situation for the benefit of oneself and the circumstances of life - but in no way between life and your “record book”.

“The longer a person works, the more experience and competence he has”: on this myth is built the entire bureaucratic system in the CIS countries + almost the entire system of our education. Wherever you go, you will everywhere come across a “40-50 aunt” who has been sitting in a chair for more than five years, not knowing how to use a computer in 2013 - but at the same time is considered a “valuable worker” or “an experienced teacher”, because it has been working here for 15-20 years. At the same time, I (and I think you too) will find at least a dozen acquaintances and friends who, in their 20-25-28 years old, have skills, knowledge and ideas that are 5 times greater than that of this “aunt” in its 60 (and many of them managed to work for 5 years in several large companies, agencies and startups, gaining experience and knowledge that no “experienced” official and theoretical teacher will receive in 15 years of “sitting” in a chair). Do you still want to learn knowledge from people who have been procrastinating the same textbook for 10 years?

"All skills can be assessed and measured": a myth that works great in a university, where everyone can "according to their deserts" grades in the record books. And then a “graduate” needs to be taught real (and not theoretical) accounting for 2 years. Skills in such areas as design, interface design, copywriting, online marketing are generally difficult to measure (because no serious domestic university trains web designers or copywriters, and a person with two projects in a portfolio for 5 years of work is in no way identical in skills to someone who has 25 projects in 2 years).

"There are recognized authorities, and we must accept this": favorite dogma of teachers and bosses of the "old school". This myth has its roots back in the days when "the party knew better", and the works of politicians and economists 80 years ago served as an irrefutable source of theory and practice for all types of activity: from science and medicine to painting and literature. Now in any field (except perhaps theoretical and quantum physics), the revision of "dogmas" and concepts occurs on average every 4-5 years. The head on shoulders and the ability to analyze and research is much more important than the unyielding belief that "everything said in granite is cast."

"You have to follow the rules": if this myth were true, then there would be no Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Bob Dylan, the Klitschko brothers and Tiger Woods. The lack of rules does not mean that you have to cross the street at a red light, eat with your hands instead of a fork and knife, and swear in public places. The absence of rules means that there is no universal recipe or habitual life scheme that must be followed so that everyone around is happy, and you "fit" into the scheme "kindergarten-school-institute-work-marriage-children-apartment in a mortgage-grandchildren- old age-pension-death. " Actually, we receive education at a university not in order to follow the rules, but in order to improve our knowledge in a certain niche and create something new that runs counter to the old scheme of commodity-money, socio-cultural and technological ties in society. But for some reason this nuance was forgotten in domestic universities.