THINKING BEYOND THE CERTIFICATE ACQUIRED IN SCHOOL BY TIJANI MARIAM

“The most valuable of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do,when it has to be done,whether you like it or not.” –Aldous Huxley

Everyone irrespective of gender, religion, colour or race has at least one or several gifts, abilities, talents or skills resident in him. In most cases, these potentials are dormant and unused which is why education is a tool to help discover, explore and put those potentials to use.

The main purpose of education is to increase human capacity to think logically and act appropriately. According to Bill Bettie, a famous author and writer believes that education should help us on how to think rather than teach us what to think.

It is disheartening and worth lamenting to know that the average Nigerians today are in school just to acquire certificate and nothing more.

Education is not just about acquiring a certificate in school but widening your knowledge and way of reasoning. Some people’s desire for education is solely rooted in acquiring wealth rather than full development of mind. “A child educated only at school is an uneducated child.” George Santayana

Like the Jews, we await the messiah, who has come and gone to liberate us from our predicament. That is, the government to provide jobs. True, it’s one of the duties of government to provide employment opportunities but we have forgotten that what we actually need is the ability to think critically and logically beyond our certificate and make something out of nothing.

Most employers out there are not so keen about the certificate but the ability to reason well and provide solutions to problems given at a particular period of time which is the proof of education.

We are in school to widen our scope, to build ourselves for the next level to achieve something greater in life and how we can drive with different energy.

Some graduates are with great certificate, first class to be precise with nothing in their brain. The reason being that most might have engaged in malpractices to succeed at all cost in their academic endeavors due to the motive to acquire the so called job. They just passed through school but they didn’t allow school to pass through them .

The reality of life is that, there are people out there especially graduates with potentials doing nothing with it. It is only those who can see and think beyond their certificate who will find their own place in life. It is not mandatory for us to practice what we studied in school.

Some pursued a certain course at the insistence of their parents who wanted them to follow their footsteps and inherit their empire. We have many lawyers, accountant and the likes who are not into practice and they are doing something meaningful with their lives. Most students are studying what they don’t even like in schools but were given but at the end of the day they are still successful in doing something beyond their course of study.

An educational system isn’t worth a great deal if it teaches young people how to make a living but doesnt teach them how to make a life. We should be building life and not just building our CVS because our value is not created by our certificate .

In the middle of 2009, he was the software engineering no one wanted to hire, he had 12 years of experience at yahoo but he was still rejected by facebook and twitter.

He went to a great university and had a great certificate but decided to team up with one of his alumni members at yahoo and started to create an app and focus on the start up space, in five years time he sold that app for $19 billion dollars to Facebook, believe it or not that was Brian Acton,the co- founder of WhatsApp.

When he was rejected by Facebook, he said it was a great opportunity to team up with fantastic people.
When he was rejected by twitter,he said worked out, that was quite a long commute. It was so amazing to see someone rejected by two top internet companies responded with humor and great positivity.

Formal education will make you a living but not a fortune, most of the world’s richest man today dropped out of school when they came to a point that their schooling is affecting their education. He was a Harvard university drop out,he went on to build microsoft. His name is Bill Gates.

If the certificate is being removed from your lives,what are your potentials? Your abilities, what you can do so well? Sure,you will need the knowledge acquired in school but don’t allow your certificate to define who you are because it may not reveal your abilities, you need to think beyond the certificate acquired in school.

Graduates that don’t think beyond their certificate are most likely to become a problem that needs to be solved instead of providing solution to problems.