Are you a product of the 8-4-4 system? Well, whether you are or you are not you have probably heard about this: “8-4-4 produces robots”. Is it true? It is said that the 8-4-4 system of education has a workload so heavy that that students go through school without getting a real education; it is said that the system produces people trained to cram and follow instructions but not actually think on their own. I’m an 8-4-4 product and so I am not sure that all this is true.

If it is true, then the 8-4-4 seems to be perfect at producing … employees. Since the dawn of the industrial age, the bulk of employment opportunities were available in “factory-type” jobs. Jobs in which the employee is a faceless ‘cog’ among many. The 8-4-4, it seems, is perfect at producing cogs. However, one may argue that all education systems everywhere produce ‘cogs’.

Why do people go to school? A while ago I heard about a pair of parents who had quite the strange reaction to the wonderful news that their daughter (who was still in college) was starting a business. The parents were furious that their daughter was starting a business instead of focusing on her school work (she was in university) and promptly put an end to her entrepreneurial ways. “Finish school, get a good job and then think about starting a business,” was the advice given.

Do we go to school so that we can be able to get a job? Am I missing something here? Don’t we all go to school so that when we come of age we are able to build a good life for ourselves and become valuable citizens? School is important, very important. But not as important as most people think it is. The important thing is to learn all that you can and how to use it to achieve your goals and/or make a good life for yourself. As it happens, ‘schooling’ is not the same as ‘education’. As Mark Twain once said, don’t let schooling interfere with your education.