Formal education versus life experience

¶ … education from grade school to university is useful for providing a foundation for learning. School exposes people to literature, art, scientific theories, athletics, and social studies. The classroom setting is structured and helps students focus, socialize with others, and learn discipline. However, school cannot give students everything they need to survive in the real world. Students in school do not learn ethics or etiquette, for example. Communication skills are also rarely taught in school. Still, school does offer many things that informal education cannot. In school, students study things they would not normally learn about otherwise. Teachers can help students think critically. Also, formal education is important for job hunting because of the importance of standardized and official credentials. Formal education has many limitations, though, and must be supplemented with life experience for it to become truly valuable. Life experience, including traveling, working, and meeting people from different backgrounds, is not a replacement for formal education. Students need to combine the best from formal and informal education by putting as much effort as possible into both pursuits.

Formal education provides structure and discipline and is not just about getting good grades. School helps students think critically about the world and so can be valuable in any real-life setting. Also, teachers in school expose students to works of art, literature, and music that the person might not have known about without formal education. Formal education is therefore necessary for the introduction to concepts. Those concepts can then be applied in some form to life experience. Also, formal education helps students find jobs they might not have known about if they did not go to school. Employers need the grades and other indicators of formal education to know that their employees are well-qualified. Formal education can also include professional workshops and lectures that enhance a person's career. Therefore, formal education serves a number of purposes that can help a person succeed.

However, life experience can be as valuable as formal education and in fact is just as necessary. A person cannot learn everything in school. There are some lessons that cannot be taught in the classroom. The best example is traveling. A person can only learn about other cultures when traveling. Reading about other cultures offers some helpful background information and facts about the language and history. However, no amount of formal education about a culture can teach someone what it feels like to interact with people from that society. Another example of why life experience is just as important as formal education is interpersonal communications. In school students meet many people from different backgrounds but cannot socialize in the classroom. Their social interactions take place after school. Students of all ages need to learn proper behaviors, etiquette, and body language. Communication is not taught well in school because social interactions need to take place in a natural environment in the same way students need to learn about cultures directly from traveling. Finally, life experience can be just as important as formal education experience for finding work. A resume includes more than just a person's grades.