Is Education = Success?

Earlier this year, I got a chance to watch a video from Jubilee. It was an episode from the "Middle Ground" series. The series illustrates two groups of people that have contradicting values and principles together and asks them a set of questions to portray how each of them think and how they can possibly understand each other. Although I have watched many episodes from this series, the episode that struck my mind that made me feel like I have to come and write this article was an episode that was uploaded 3  years ago and the title says "Dropouts And Graduates: Is College Worth It?".

The idea of this article came from a statement given to the participants (whether they agree or not). The statement was "Education is the key to success". The statement inspired me to question if education really is the key to success. When talking about education, one may think of it as something that comes along with college/high school, but actually, we are learning continuously everyday more or less, so in this article, I will divide education into two main parts: education from school/college system and education from individual learning. I will also talk about other elements that also aid us to reach accomplishment. Let us identify the two parts of education first.

Education From The System

Education from the system is basically the fundamental or the structural learning that most who enrol into the system will receive the same pattern of knowledge. In Thailand's education system for example, every Thai student has to have an experience of trying to memorise the poem that was given by the Thai teachers. Back then, we had no idea what good deeds it would bring to us except an A if we memorised every part of it. From a Thai student who graduated from a Thai school, I find memorising poems useless and it has not helped me with my life in any way except that I can still remember it today. Although the example I gave is one of the exercises that have no purpose or benefit, there are many classes that are beneficial. What I want to say is that, education from the system requires students to study specific courses although those students feel like they don't like or need it.

Education From Individual Learnings

Education from individuals can be more futile or on the other hand, it can be more distinct depending on how one manages their learnings. You want to research something, go to Jstor or Google Scholars; you want to read books without reading, go to audible; or if you want to watch how to do statistics, go to YouTube. Myriads of methods that you to acquire certain knowledge and I say that because we live in a world that is only one click away from everything and that sometimes leads us getting pulled into a so-called "internet rabbit hole" where users can easily lose hours of time that should be spent on studying. People who rely on self-learning need to be more determined to not get sidetracked since self-learning can become difficult compared to learning in classes where there are so many contents online that can distract you from learning.

Although education is one of the essentials to become successful, timing plays an important role in order to triumph in this world. Education is like walking up the stairs step by step; learning, preparing and waiting to get the chance to show and utilise it. It's like you get yourself educated to be ready and capable enough to catch the chance thrown to you.

Time Waits For No One

Speaking of timing, Bill Gross, founder of Idealab, gave a speech at TED in 2015 saying that timing is the number one factor out of the five factors that he mentioned(Ideas, Team, Business Model, Funding, Timing) for companies to become billion dollar successes. He looked at a hundred companies under Idealab and another hundred that are not. His findings depict how each company prioritises or has more of that factor among the others and the companies that became successful have timing as their most.

For me and I might be wrong, education is not the only factor that will determine whether one will be successful or not, I think that timing is another factor that needs to be considered important as well. I always think that only one decision is what it takes to change one's life and that is all about timing, the trend of the world. Who knows when that moment will come, I guess we just need to keep improving ourselves everyday. At least wake up and do all that we can.