Everyone knows how important education is. We all strive to do well at school for a particular reason. We are told that our education is the only race we have to go for, the primary key that can open our door to a great career, a large bungalow, a stylish car and respect from everyone.

Sometimes this all seems right. We believe that we need to excel at school for that fulfilling career and everything.

Huge curricula are stacked upon us at each level and we go from preschool learning the ABC to universities studying various sciences or memorizing facts and figures or looking at formulas and derivations. But the greatest problem of our education curriculum is that it doesn’t focus on systematically preparing students for many aspects of the real challenge out there: Life itself.

A chalkboard, a desk, assignments and life begins and ends with rings of bells. This is the only way we think how students can learn, parrot-fashion. One thing upon another, we pile upon them. This has been the definition of education for centuries. Some excel and others just pass by. But there are people who did terribly at school but aced at life and there are people who did brilliantly at school but flunked at life.

All we do at school is run after the A’s or the good grades. We chase them by cramming for exams, mugging up everything we need to learn and destroying our originality. Indirectly, our schools are teaching us about the dangers of originality. We are taught to memorize ideas rather than to originate them ourselves.

We are taught what everyone already knows and never given an opportunity to explore and build ourselves. We never seem to find out what really is going on, what we really have to learn and what we are learning now. They teach us to measure the area of polygons and how a simple pendulum works, but they fail to teach us the core subject of life.

We all are trapped inside a big education bubble that could burst at any time. There are two opposite forces pulling us in the opposite directions: the emotional tension and the creative tension and we are stuck somewhere in the science of feelings.

With all the pressure, we never seem to find out what we are really meant to do. We have to go on with the flow like dead fish.

Finish all the levels of education and go in search of a decent job, that’s what we have decided for our life. We never try to find out what life wants from us and we will never know that education is not just for employment.