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What’s the point of learning if knowledge becomes rapidly obsolete?

Francisco Miraval

“What’s the point of spending so much time and money studying and learning if the knowledge we acquire will become obsolete almost instantaneously?” a young college student asked me a few weeks ago. I didn’t give him a good answer and I don’t have any good answer now. That question, however, forced me to analyze the issue.

From a certain perspective, the college student is right. What’s the point of spending thousands and thousands of dollars in college tuition and of spending years and years inside classrooms if, once you get your diploma, whatever you have learned will be obsolete? In fact, we could argue that the knowledge we learn is already obsolete before we learn it and that’s why it is being taught to us.

The traditional approach to education, that is, going to a classroom to listen to a teacher or a professor, is now but one of the many ways anybody can acquire good, updated knowledge. In many cases, that knowledge is better that what is being taught at schools and universities.

If you want to study languages, or music, or philosophy, or almost any other topic, you will easily find information, videos, and lessons online, including free or low-cost lessons from major universities, such as the ones offered by Coursera.org. (In fact, I use Coursera’s classes as part of my professional development plan.)

It can also be argued that the whole American education system (and, by extension and influence, the Western education system) is unable to respond to the needs of the digitally-native generation, who live in a post-modern, techno-scientific world and who doesn’t fit in the traditional models of teaching and learning.

At the same time, it seems many college degrees and careers are now devaluated. They are still needed, of course, but they don’t generate the respect and economic impact as they previously did.

Why, then, study? Why we take a child, a young person, away from his or her family for more than 20 years, from pre-K to post-graduate studies, to give to that person some kind of knowledge that he/she will find mostly useless?

After reflecting upon the initial question, I finally realized the answer was not to decide if the college student was right or not, but analyze his understanding of “education,” that for him meant “acquisition of knowledge.” No doubt, that’s what education means in our time, but there have been and there are many other approaches to education. In some places and circles, “education” means learning how to live with wisdom, creativity, faith, and a clean consciousness.

Children and young people know the “education” they receive at schools and colleges is not true education (discovery of self-potential and how to achieve it), but just “instruction” (training for a certain task or function.)

True education can be found inside or outside the classroom and leads to self-discovery, hence, it will never become obsolete. That’s what I should have said to the college student. I hope he will discover it himself.

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