As someone who has spent over half of
her life as a student, I can vouch for the importance of school. While new
school years are often met with groans and complaints, it is our civic duty as
parents and human beings, to educate our children, not to mention ourselves.
School serves a number of purposes from building confidence to teaching
children the importance of teamwork and working with others. School helps guide
youngsters though the establishment of a daily routine, which is of utmost
importance as we direct them toward the workplace, and as they become
productive members of society. Students are provided with access to new ideas,
including science and language, and are given the opportunity to learn more
about world cultures, geography, and personal history.
There are many types of schools available, ranging from
private to public to homeschooling. Online academies and a number of public and
private school programs offer Internet-based learning too. Whatever the choice,
a person’s schooling is always more effective with positive reinforcement from
parents or guardians. The Home-School Connection, a course by Steve Reifman,
offers excellent advice and instruction to help parents and guardians work with
together with teachers to guide students through many successful years of
education.
Let’s take a look at why school is so
important to children of all ages (and adults too!):
1. Confidence
Learning about new subjects and becoming proficient in a
skill can help a child (or an adult) grow exponentially. I grew up in a city
where the arts program had been completely deleted from the public school I
attended. We moved when I was 15 to the suburbs of Houston, Texas, to a school
that not only supported a fine arts curriculum, but also had the second most
successful arts program in the state (quantified by the number of students who
had graduated from high ranking university and private college-level art
programs). I thrived at this school and my confidence increased tenfold because
I had access to classes, teachers, and administrators that supported my love of
the arts, and gave me a community of fellow artists to have as a support
system. This small community gave me a sense of belonging and a safe place to
experiment and grow my skills as a visual artist, which in turn provided me
with the confidence I needed to apply and eventually attend art school.
2. Socialization
Humans are social animals and we need people around us to
survive. School, yes even online school, can be an excellent way to build a
network of friends and a like-minded community. I recently took an online
course with an artist whose work I admire. Almost instantly, I was provided
with an extensive online network of the instructor’s former students, who were
available to offer advice and support regarding assignments and projects. Now,
even months after taking the course, I’ve managed to maintain a connection with
my instructor as well as a number of my fellow students. My graduate school
experience also provided me with a number of friends that I currently work with
and utilize when I’m putting together a new project. These connections and
relationships can offer you guidance through the career landscape and offer
help when you need a recommendation or job position or a shoulder to lean on.
I’ve found that many of my friends from this period in my life have experienced
similar struggles and successes, and their presence in my life has often helped
me during difficult times in my career.
3. Teamwork
Friendships aren’t the only important relationships that can
be built through school. A school environment offers students the opportunity
to learn to work with others, which is a very important “real world” skill.
Through games and projects, and even participation in after-school sports,
children can learn the importance of forging relationships with each other.
These activities can also help us learn to manage difficult personalities, find
our way as leaders, and better understand the way we work as individuals. These
lessons provide us with valuable experiences that as adults, we use everyday.
Working with others is all about managing different personalities and finding
ways to make your workday run more smoothly. For more information about team
building and creating a stellar team, try Traininaday Training’s Team Building:
How to Build High-Performing Teams in 1 Day.
4. Preparation
Even if you graduate with what seems like a useless degree
in today’s economy (yes, I have a degree in drawing and yes, I have another
degree in weaving) all forms of education can lead us toward a fulfilling life.
As my 96-year-old grandfather says, “there is a job for everyone,” which I have
found, despite my cynicism, to be true. School doesn’t merely teach facts and
figures and numbers and letters. School is crucial in preparing children to
become their future selves. As someone who has worked a number of jobs and has
been in school for most of her life, I’ve found that each person I’ve
encountered, each class I’ve taken, and each job I’ve worked has taught me
something about myself and has pointed me toward my specific career direction.
Without that freshman level art history course, I never would have been able to
teach the same subject five years later, and without those multiple English
classes, I wouldn’t be sitting here now typing this blog post. If you think you
may have a skill or the knowledge about a specific subject that you’d like to
pass on to others, consider exploring Brian Robison’s Getting Started Teaching
Online.
5. Information
Perhaps one of the most important reasons to attend school
is the wealth of knowledge and information provided within the school setting.
School provides a safe haven for the spread of ideas, and often gives us access
to subjects and ideas that we wouldn’t regularly find in our homes or with our
friends. Learning a new language, for example, is often best done within the
confines of the language’s native country. Most people do not have the means to
spend the many years it would take living in a foreign country to learn another
language.
School can often offer access to those who have had the
opportunity to really study a second or third language, and those educators can
give a first hand advice on pronunciation, culture, sentence structure. I
recently took a beginning Japanese course at my local community college with a
woman who had grown up in Japan. I learned at least as much in that class as I
did in a single year of work for a Japanese company, and I had a blast
learning, not only from my teacher, but from my fellow students as well. A
teacher like Nicholas Kemp, who lived in Japan for ten years and established
his own language school also has an abundance of knowledge, which he shares in
his course Speak Japanese Fluently- Master Conversational Japanese.
6. Inspiration
I’ve found, as a writer and artist, that school has not only
helped me develop lifelong friendships, work strategies, and career goals, but
has also functioned as one of my primary means of inspiration. If I hit a patch
of writer’s block, or artist’s block, I’ve found that taking a course can often
reignite my passion for my craft. A year ago, I was completely lost in terms of
my studio practice as an artist. I wasn’t making any work and I felt like maybe
my time in fine arts was over.
My husband suggested that I take a workshop that the local
art school was offering, and within a month, I was drawing and painting again
with the passion that I’d had when I first entered art school nearly 20 years
ago. Even as someone who has worked as a professional educator, I never feel as
though I know everything simply because I have a college degree. School
benefits everyone, and it’s important to remember that everyone can better
himself through learning.
7. Community
A school can function as the center of a person’s community
and can act as a meeting place, a place for children to grow, and a second
home. Despite my disdain for school as a child, I grew up to appreciate the
sense of safety and comfort it gave me, and I consider that so many of the
activities that gave me my identity as a youth were cultivated at school. My
elementary school, located in the center of my neighborhood, was the home of
the park where my sisters and I played, housed the pool we swam in, and held
the library where we checked out our first books.
The school wasn’t simply a place to sit and learn, and it
became a centerpiece of our community where kids attended band practice and
chess club, and where parents often sat for hours waiting for their kids to
finish their activities. I read somewhere recently that as humans, all we
really desire is a sense of community and belonging, and I think a school can
provide that for both children and adults. Even online school programs, where
the user is alone with his or her computer can empower a student with the help
of the community of learners it creates.
School is not only important to us as individual’s school
helps society progress by educating its members who bring their newly acquired
information to the workforce. School boosts confidence and teaches us to
establish and maintain friendships, and helps us learn how to work together as
a team, which is a primary tenet of any successful society. Without school,
knowledge would not spread as quickly, and our access to new ideas and people
could easily be cut off.
A world without school would create difficulties in language
learning, and would stall the dispersion of economic growth, tolerance, and the
appreciation of our fellow human beings. For those who are currently enrolled
in school, keep up the great work! For adults who are thinking about returning
to the classroom, try Jason Teteak’s Adult Education Essential: Build a
Learning Environment. Whether you’re a parent seeing your child off to his
first day of kindergarten, or you’re a graduate student finishing your thesis,
school can bring you knowledge, friendships, and a better understanding of
yourself and your place within your culture.
