School is NOT a scam: More reasons beyond numbers

BY OLUWATOYIN AJILORE-CHUKWUEMEKA

Let me cut to the chase: School is NOT a scam.

I know. In recent decades, formal education has produced far less than it promised. But as a person who has been a student, a teacher at different levels of education, and now an education researcher, I can never agree with the school na scam theory.  You likely know other people who also hold my stance. And you may have found research that shows quantitative data to refute the School Na Scam theory. For instance, over 90% of top CEOs in any region of the world have at least a Bachelor’s. More than 95% of Unicorn founders have at least a Bachelor’s degree and 60% have a Master’s Degree or higher. However, for people who are not convinced by numbers, I offer a qualitative argument.

School Na Scam (SNS) movement is premised on the idea that structured education has failed the modern youth mainly because of a lack of usefulness in preparing them for the world. I am arguing that this is a naive conclusion birthed from a narrow point of view. Narrow because it reduces the spectrum of developmental results of formal schooling. Unlike the SNS movement likes to acknowledge, formal schools, especially at tertiary levels, work at developing students in at least four kinds of ways:

• Academic Development

By this, I mean the rigorous understanding of the theoretical foundations of a field. Any knowledgeable person is aware that innovation is easily birthed when you are at a cutting edge of a field, i.e. when you are so established in its existing framework that you can then make new connections. I love the way Dr Henrietta Onwuegbuzie, the Director of the Business Innovation Accelerator at Lagos Business School puts it in one session: “Theory is practical because it is the summary of practices.” Is there a need to improve the practical application in universities? Yes. But does that makes theoretical principles completely trivial? No.

• Personal Development

This goes without saying. No one truly subjects themselves to the rigour of structured education and does not come out on the other side stretched in their thinking about themselves, others, and the world.  And no, it is not just their academics that does that to them; it is their friends; what they see their colleagues accomplish; the environment, and how it changes their perspectives. It is in every single thing that happens to them in the daily dimensions of the education journey.

• Social Development

This is one crucial but severely underestimated outcome of structured education. Formal education provides one of the best networking platforms one can find. Tertiary institutions, for example, bring together a plethora of extremely valuable people usually at the stage where the “do or die” pressure of networking associated with the “adulthood workspace” has not yet fully set in. It is where relationship building is still in its easiest forms, enabling young people to amass social capital with the littlest efforts, like just being in the same class with someone. Many top achievers today are still benefitting largely from such social capital. It is the reason why the top schools are strong in their alumni associations.

• Intellectual Capacity Development

I once asked a colleague who didn’t continue in our discipline post-graduation, if he thought he wasted his four years of undergraduate study.  He vehemently rejected that notion. According to him, the rigour of his student life- the crazy lecture schedules, the many assignments, the figure-it-yourself projects, and the back-to-back exams–developed his intellectual capacity. This capacity now helps him manage his complex job in a new field which always demands him to be able to think on his feet and sustain a high level of self-drive. I totally understood what he meant. I have pursued many other interests outside of my discipline, and the intellectual capacity that I developed was useful for me in every one of them.

It would be easy to agree that School is Scam if we think the only thing formal education is meant to deliver is a person fit for a certain job in a certain industry. But when we expanded our horizon beyond this, it becomes easier to see why the argument does not hold water.

Are there a lot of issues with the way formal education is currently being approached? Yes. Can things be done better? Absolutely! But does that mean School na Scam? No and Never.

Oluwatoyin is a Doctoral Researcher in STEM Education, Social Entrepreneur, and Policy Consultant.  She writes from Boston, United States, & Lagos, Nigeria. She can be reached at [email protected]