6 THINGS SCHOOL DID NOT TEACH US

1. Personal Finance

It is very tempting for one to think that been taught subjects like Economics, Accounting, Costing  among others in school means that you have knowledge in Personal Finance. Sad!

Now the big question is what is Personal Finance?? It is the knowledge of understanding what Investment is, what financial planning is, and what a Retirement Plan is. (what is been referred  here is retiring young and rich not at 60 and broke)  Knowledge in these will help you make the right financial decisions. And what will make you make the right financial decision? Your understanding of what it means to be Rich and what it means to be Wealthy. A lot of times people confuse the two and think they are the same; unfortunately the two are not the same.

Been rich means you have a lot of money either cash in hand or having a lot of money sitting in the bank, in that case the individual will interpret it as been rich, what we lose sight  is the fact that the money  is just paper and does not appreciate over time but rather depreciates. Also the money can be spent and finished at once at any moment and return the person to square one.  (Note: wealthy people do not put money in Bank, they invest it)

On the other hand been wealthy means you have a lot of assets (businesses, systems, money making properties) that generates income for you otherwise known as residual income, means you do not have to necessarily and actively involved in active work, but those assets generates for you money passively.(Of course this can take time to build)  Actually you can be rich but not wealthy because if you have a lot of money and you don’t have the financial literacy to invest it, within a twinkle of an eye it can escape like petrol. That explains why some people win jackpots or lottery or even some stars that make a lot of cash go broke shortly. Also most people in job spend much of their money in their life time acquiring liabilities (cars, parties, weddings, jewelry etc. sometimes with loans) instead of investing into assets. The reason is that concept of financial knowledge is lacking.  They are two type of income streams- Active Income and Passive Income. Most people from school that work in job actually earns active income (salary) and has no knowledge about how to create and own systems that generates for them wealth because they are trapped with salary. School teaches us one side of making money that is Active Income, (Acquiring a job and working for money) but does not teach us how to create and own systems that generates money (money working for us)

 Understanding what it takes to be wealthy will help you create and own systems or businesses and the right investments (possible with the 21^st century business mindset) that becomes assets and can make you earn residual income (passive income) The Economics, Costing among other things we learn in school only prepares us to have a job mindset and offers us job to earn active income with no knowledge in creating passive income,(wealth) that is why we have a lot of school products with that background working as employees (bankers) in the bank.

The sad thing is that most school products work like robots in job retire at age 60-65 with no acquired assets but their certificates as assets which become worthless.

2. Core Values (Soul of the individual)

As individuals we are created and born differently and have in us our core values. Now what are core values? Core values is the soul of the individual, it is the inner persona with regards to taste, choice, like, hate, dislike and a strong interpretation of what life is and the worth of life and the world around you. That is what represents your core values. (necessary in defining your capabilities)

In identifying your core values there are some critical questions you need to answer to identify your core values.

• Who you are (what do you like about yourself?)
• What do you like about others? (What do they like about you?)
• What do you like about your immediate environment? (constructivism)
• What makes me stand out among people? ( traits, capabilities,)
• How can I use these to benefit society?

Doing critical thinking and giving answers  to the above will help you understand yourself better into identifying your true potential which can make you incredibly  successful. Now if you look at our school system it’s so theoretical and bookish that the individual’s core values are relegated to the background and we are rather imposed with skills and professions that don’t define us. According to Roy .T. Bernett, “if you  compromise your core values you go nowhere”, that explains why a lot of people are not happy with their jobs they are not happy with their state of life, because their core values has been robbed, their core values has been exchanged. If you look at people that changed the world, the likes of Richard Brandson, Mark Zukerberg, Ludwig van Beethoven, Bill Gate, Steve Jobs, Karl Benz, among others, these are people that identified their core values earlier.

Once you pick up those core values you are able to connect with and tap into your potentials as you  get to know who you are: potentials that can make you make a change in the world than you allowing school to rob you of your potential.

3. Tasking and failure

I know you might see this to be odd, that I’m talking about failure not been taught in school as a course or subject. Actually failure is something that school hates, school want perfection.

Now what is Tasking? Tasking is the ability to allow your inner drive your inner passion to embrace a challenge, a difficult situation that demands a solution which allows you to use your ingenious creativity, potential to come out with a solution to a problem that has a benefit for humanity. And this demands a lot of failure in the process.  Now school is the opposite, everything in the school system is been programmed; facts, data and theories is been given to you to memorize and not to make a mistake, in this case you dare not make mistake because you will be penalized. So that kind of inner drive that will lead you into tasking is not there, and we are been made to fear failure. In this case how do you come out with innovation?

School is refusing to understand that failure is a necessary impetus in achieving greatness. Failure allows one to be ingeniously creative because there are so many steps you need to go through to be able to solve a problem.

If you look at it critically school is producing little or low achievement people because people come out from school and everyone is normal (they’ve not learnt anything new) everyone is average. This explains why those that have changed the world and have achieved greatness are very few, their quest to face up to task outside school has made them who they are.

The orientation people get from school such as writing and passing exams and not failing creates a scar in people and if they at some point try to venture into the world of innovation and entrepreneurship, once it demands failure they easily give up.

If you catalogue all those that have made history either alive or still in existence, they were people that failed greatly in their quest to succeed; Walt Disney had to fail 300x before succeeding in life, Thomas Edison was told by his teachers that he was a good for nothing person and stupid and that he can’t learn anything good in school but he didn’t allow that to draw him back no! he re-positioned himself and identified his potential that has made him bring out one of the greatest innovations of all time by inventing the light bulb. Even with that he had to go through a great deal of failure, in his quest to invent the bulb he had to fail, he tried 1,000x to succeed.  Oprah Winfrey went through lots of failures to achieve greatness. There is a tall list to attest to this which I can’t exhaust here.

Actually robotically programming students against failure is one of the major setbacks in the school system.

4. Creativity and Innovation (Individualism)

Creativity and Innovation allows one to create or invent new ideas that have not existed before or picking up old ideas and making them new. You realized that this is not the case in school, people are been forced to memorise facts data and figures, things that were taught in the 1920s are still most times things that are taught today, no room for bringing out something new.  You visit the classroom and teachers have pinned students down forcing them to learn Mathematics, History, Theories etc. these are things people have learnt over and over, they are not new. (though learning them not bad, but we’ve moved beyond that in this 21^st century). That intuition to learn outside the box is not encouraged. Knowledge in innovation that allows people to think outside the box brings about self-awareness that leads one into identifying his potential as it will encourage individualism instead of memorizing and producing same results all the time. As Albert Einstein said; “insanity is doing same thing over and over again and expecting different results”

One of the major reasons Africa is experiencing stagnant growth is a reflection of what is been taught in school, too bookish: producing lots of professors who can’t invent anything new. Sad!

5. Thinking and Problem Solving (Discovery)

We are in an era of technology of which ways of doing things is rapidly changing with daily paradigm shifts that ushers in the need for solutions to daily problems. We are witnessing a shift from physical man power into A.Is and robots taking over the work space into making work faster and easier. Our daily tasks now demands coming out with solutions to meet current work needs.

Now when you look at our schooling system the robotic and rote style of learning has put students into a tight box which does not give the students the freedom to think, this is because students are programmed to religiously memorize what is given to them to memorize ( I don’t like calling it learning because is not learning) this restricts and limits their thinking capability and kills their thinking and problem solving power and exchanged with data, facts and figures memorizing ability.

The subject of Thinking and Problem Solving will produce a lot of the Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Henry Fords, Elon Musks etc. there are a lot of such people in school with such potentials but it will die in them, because the school system has programmed them differently unless by chance some of them become school renegades and orient themselves differently

6. Tools of Technology (necessary for the 21^st century)

It’s obvious that we are in the era of technology and the demands of this era is different from the demands of the 19^th or 20^th century. Sadly to note most of the things still been taught in school are outdated and do not match up to current trends. School is teaching us something different technology is also moving a different direction, so the two are on divergent directions.

These tools include; webinars, podcast, classcraft, web 2.0 tools, hootsuite, vlogging and blogging, software applications etc. These are tools that will help us to learn and explore; learning takes place when you are able to understand these technological tools to be able to fit in this 21^st century.

 Looking at it on the other hand what school is teaching us is just bookish, most people graduate from college without knowing what these tools are or even how to use them.

It will take a big learning curve for some of them to actually pick up some of these things, if only they are fortunate to know. Eventually they dump what they’ve learnt in school because it has no impact, it has no direct application in their lives.

Why do we need these tools of technology? there are necessary because the century we are in now is about technology from communication to work input and output. When you even dare to ask some teachers in school weather they know these tools, you’ll realize they don’t know, they don’t even know they exist; their brains are pre-occupied with data, facts, figures and theories, most of them don’t know what they are.

This is why some of us have problem with school and think that school is outdated.

SUMMARY

The decision now is with the individual: your destiny is in your own hands, you either be controlled or used by the system or you take advantage of the abundant opportunities offered by this century re-school yourself and move away from the enslavement of  the school system that robs you of your God given capabilities by imposing professions on us.