Is Education "All That"?
](http://learningexplored.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/8314929977_28fd740070_n.jpg)I had a wonderful opportunity to talk with a woman(we’ll call her Jane) who has accomplished several things that I have only dreamed of. She has developed a new approach to an old and vexing problem many nurses face, she contributed to the development of a new medical device, she has been published in peer-reviewed journals, and has spoken around the world before thousands of people to introduce other professionals to both her new technique and to the medical device. She can confidently say that the approach she developed is being used in health care settings around the world. And she has an associate’s degree — the minimum level of education required to become a nurse.
Without that last sentence I have no doubt that you would have expected that I would have introduced her as Doctor Jane, indicating her PhD in nursing or some allied field. But she is not; she is minimally educated for her profession. And there’s the rub.
We have become so trained that more education is always the way to wealth, fame, and fortune that we have really, I think, overlooked the real drivers of accomplishing things like Jane has done: Curiosity, creativity, and drive. The simple fact is I know quite a number of highly educated people who have not, and will not, accomplish what Jane has done. Or anything close to it.
Before I get bashed for bashing higher education, don’t misunderstand my meaning. higher education has a place (I”m banking heavily on it!) The lead author of Jane’s article is a PhD educated nurse researcher. There’s little doubt that it was with her colleague’s guidance that Jane wrote and published what she did. But he didn’t develop the technique; she did. His role was to help her evangelize it.
But we also need to remember that without creativity, curiosity, and drive no amount of education will lead to new ideas, or new products. What scares me sometimes, though, is that it seems that we are “educating” these traits out of our students. Peter Gray, a research psychologist at Boston College penned this article about the creativity killing effects of traditional education with its focus on high-stakes testing. For years before, I have questioned education’s role in developing or squelching a child’s innate creativity. You can teach techniques in art, for example, or the mechanics of playing a musical instrument. One wonders what Pablo Picasso’s art would have been had he remained at the Royal Academy of San Fernando, Spain’s foremost art school of the time. How different would the Apple computer be if Steve Jobs had remained in college? Would there even be and Apple computer? Jobs, for example, famously dropped out of Reed College only to later audit courses that “interested” him.
Now, to be sure, not everyone who charts their own path will be as successful as Jobs, or Picasso, and others who have made their mark in the world despite lacking higher education credentials. My point isn’t to argue that education isn’t necessary. On the contrary, it is highly necessary. None of the things that have been accomplished — even by people like Steve Jobs — would have been possible had they not been educated. But their educational path was one of their choosing. They eschewed the traditional structured process of formal education in favor of an educational path that was driven by their interests. Consequently they learned more and achieved more because they were curious about a topic, driven to learn more, and creative in how they apply that knowledge.