Are you wondering whether school is a waste of time?
If so, this post is for you.
Read on and you will find out whether or not school is a waste of time.
Table of Contents
Why School Is a Waste of Time
1. School Doesn’t Teach Necessary Life Skills
This is a deficiency that must be addressed.
The whole point of going to school is to learn all of the skills required to become a self-sufficient adult. If school doesn’t accomplish this goal, then school is a waste of time.
When you have an environment where adults still have to rely on their parents for necessities, there is something to be said about what school is teaching (or lack thereof) that is contributing to this situation.
A study conducted on behalf of H&R Block showed that 89% of Americans believe that their lives would be made easier had they learned useful skills in high school.
This same study revealed that there are 5 useful things Americans wished they learned in school.
The 5 things Americans wished to learn in school are:
- Money Management and Budgeting
- How to Properly Do Taxes
- How to Manage Mental Well-Being
- Understanding Loans
- How to Negotiate
According to an executive from H & R Block, “a lot of Americans aren’t as confident as they’d like to be when it comes to many day-to-day life skills, including how to file their taxes.”
This validates a deficiency in the education system.
Education is supposed to provide an individual with the skills required to achieve the desired task.
In the case of public schools, their job is to provide our youth with the skills required to be self-sufficient in the real world.
What this evidence shows us is that the public school system is NOT doing this job.
More proof of this is that 12 states in the country have adopted laws requiring personal finance to be a high school graduation requirement.
Had personal finance been taught in schools from the beginning, these laws wouldn’t need to be passed.
The problem would already be solved.
Of course, this list of useful things that should be taught in school is exhaustive and would honestly require a book to dive deep into them, but this research study proves that there are skills that should be taught in school, but aren’t.
Hence, it’s understandable to believe that school is a waste of time.
2. Schools Teach Subjects Not Relevant To a Student’s Future (Both Career and Life Related)
This is why school can be boring at times and why a big bulk, not necessarily 98%, of what you learn in school can be a waste of time.
The H & R Block study also revealed 5 things Americans felt they learned in school they deem useless.
The 5 things Americans thought were useless that they learned in school are:
- Pythagorean Theorem (not if you are going to be an engineering or physics major; you need to know this)
- Knowing Pi is 3.14
- Periodic Table of Elements
- The Types of Rocks
- The Difference Between Protons, Neutrons, and Electrons
Of course, this list takes a broad sample of people and your list can change based on your career goals.
For instance, a geologist will likely need to know the different types of rocks to do their job, and a chemist will need to know the periodic table to identify elements too, say, determine an element’s ionic charge.
The point of this section is to identify that, for the most part, schools do not teach several pieces of information that are relevant to most students’ futures.
It’s kind of like going into a room with a blindfold on with the lights off and being asked to hit the bullseye on the wall with a dart arrow.
You know you want to hit the bullseye, but you don’t have the training to do so nor do you know where it is.
Likewise with school, you know what you want to pursue, but what training do you need to get there?
Is an accountant going to need to know the different types of rocks?
To hit the target in this case, you will need training on how to analyze, say, a financial statement and perhaps learn all of the tax loopholes available to a citizen.
Knowing the different types of rocks will not allow you to hit the bullseye in the room.
Ideally, it should be that all students learn the fundamentals required to be self-sufficient adults in today’s world. This would mean life skills, money management, how to do taxes, how to invest, mindset and goal setting, how to interact with people, how to network, etc.
Then, once those skills are set in stone, the system helps each student identify his or her strengths and preferences, compares them to what’s in demand in the marketplace, and creates a curriculum tailored to this person.
In this case, the person will understand WHY they need to take, for instance, geology to achieve their goal, while also being able to provide for themselves.
So, in a nutshell, it’s time to cut the fluff and leave the filet mignon on the plate.
3. Schools Don’t Offer Everything That Education Entails
I want you to understand this:
Education is more than just becoming self-sufficient.
School can help you become self-sufficient, even though it has its problems.
However, learning from school alone is not going to buy you a Boeing 757.
You see, the most successful people in the world become exceptional at what they do not because they followed all of the information presented in school, but because they educated themselves and experienced different things that traditional education doesn’t offer.
This is a process called self-education.
It’s the process of going out of the school system and learning from other resources produced by the most successful people.
This is the secret of the top 1%.
It’s the competitive edge that makes the top performers unstoppable.
An education that allows you to thrive in this world is the most important education you will ever receive on top of learning what you need to do to survive and be self-sufficient.
Eventually, what you want to do is earn enough passive income (money earned from not trading time) so that you can outsource all of the tasks associated with self-sufficiency to others under your direction so you can use that time to go build an empire instead of trying to survive.
I can tell you school alone will NOT give you this knowledge.
You have to hustle to get it and you have to take action on it.
However, if you acquire the information you need to achieve your goal without the help of schools, you will be way ahead of your peers.
If you want to get started on this, books like “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill and “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie can help get you started, on top of blogs like this one and the best YouTube videos on whatever you want to learn.
And don’t forget the library!
Why School is NOT a Waste of Time
I believe that certain aspects of school are a waste of time and that it needs to be improved, as we just discussed.
However, abolishing it will make your life and everyone’s life WORSE!
There are many positive benefits to school you might be overlooking.
Let’s go over some of these.
1. You NEED To Graduate From High School
I don’t care if you are an aspiring entrepreneur or an aspiring artist.
There is NO EXCUSE for you NOT to graduate high school.
This fact alone debunks the myth that school is a waste of time.
To get into ANY occupation you can think of, you NEED a high school diploma.
Whether this involves going to college, trade school, doing an apprenticeship, joining the military, getting into a launchpad career like being a real estate agent, or entrepreneurship in a lot of cases, you need to graduate from high school.
If you are not convinced that you need to graduate high school, let me explain something to you.
I once read a FANTASTIC book about sales called “Triggers” by Joseph Sugarman (I highly recommend you read it. I’ll put a link here if you want to buy it).
In the book, he talks about a sales trigger called “harmony.”
Here’s how it works:
The market (aka people with money) has preferences and expectations about what they want and need.
These are the things they are willing to pay for.
This market consists of employers.
Their preference is to pay for people who at least have a high school diploma.
They will NOT pay to hire anyone who doesn’t have this credential.
Chances are, you are someone who doesn’t have the money required to pay your way without the financial support of your parents.
Therefore, if they kick you out, you must fend for yourself without any skills to trade to receive the money you need to live.
You might be thinking “Can’t I start a business?”
The answer is no.
You can’t.
Why?
2 things:
- You don’t have the skill set to do it
- You need money to put in the time required to build the skill set that enables you to build a business and more money to run the business itself
Therefore, you are left with no choice but to do what the market says to get the funds that you need to survive.
Since you don’t have a high school diploma and the market calls for a high school diploma, guess what?
You are stuck working 2-3 jobs just to make ends meet.
Why?
Because you are not harmonizing with the marketplace.
Completing high school is the first step toward harmonizing with the marketplace so you can get the funds that you need to learn the skills that’ll help you build your career AND to build your career itself.
THAT’S why graduating from high school is necessary.
Got it?
I understand why you are questioning it. It can seem worthless at times.
BUT, the market makes the rules.
Since this is the rule the market wants to establish, you MUST follow it.
If there is ANYTHING I want you to take away from this article, please let it be that.
I cannot stress how important it is to follow the market before you take the lead, especially if you come from a disadvantaged background of some kind.
As far as college is concerned, comment below if you want me to discuss this in this post or another post. I will do this if you want me to.
But for K-12, please don’t say that school is a waste of time. I double dare you.
2. You CAN Learn Useful Skills In School
This one comes with a catch.
The catch is that you must combine this knowledge with self-education to get the most out of your learning experience in school.
Schools don’t teach you a lot of useful skills, but it is a GREAT environment to practice skills you are learning on your own.
For instance, with test-taking, you can develop your discipline, time management, and attention to detail skills while studying for tests and taking tests.
With only self-education, it’s going to be difficult to practice these skills in a timed environment where there is a lot of pressure, especially since you are in high school and shouldn’t be working.
When I was in college, I learned the fundamentals of discipline, time management, and attention to detail on my own.
I didn’t need school to learn these concepts.
But, going to school was an opportunity for me to practice these skills and fine-tune them so that when I got out into the real world, these skills would be sharp and I’d become a productive employee.
Lo and behold, this turned out to be the case.
My success in taking tests and studying for them proved to be extremely useful when it came to learning information on the job and performing well on the tasks I was given.
What you’ll see when you start working is that contrary to popular belief, school does provide you with skills that are useful in the real world when you see things from the correct perspective.
School is set up so that you know how to effectively perform in an environment where there is a lot of work to be done in a short amount of time and classmates and professors are there just like bosses and fellow employees are there to answer your questions when need be.
I agree with you that they should teach practical skills like being disciplined, setting goals, how to manage time, how to study, how to have a successful mindset, etc.
It’s a flaw in the system.
However, when it comes to practicing these skills in an environment that, quite frankly, is exactly like the real world, nothing beats school.
You just have to mix your self-education and formal schooling to get the best overall experience.
3. School Can Provide You The Opportunity To Become Exposed to a Wide Variety of Subjects
For starters, you have the standard curriculum in which you can display your curiosity to your teachers and show that you care about the subject.
This is the first step in making the most out of your academic experience in school and extracting every opportunity that you can from school while you are there.
If you do well in your classes and you show that you are passionate about a subject and want to learn more about the subject to benefit your career and just out of plain curiosity, a teacher in the right state of mind will provide you with the resources in the topic to benefit your career and maybe, write you a recommendation letter when you need it.
When you do this, you provide the value they are looking for and they’ll feel inclined to reciprocate to you as a result of you being genuinely interested in what they teach, their subject, and bringing a positive attitude every day to class.
Any teacher will work with you 100% of the way to achieve your goals. You’ll be a diamond in the rough if you do this.
Second to their family, any teacher wants nothing more than any student to express a genuine interest in what they do and to ask questions about how they can further understand the topic they teach.
School is the only place where you are guaranteed to have this environment. Not in the real world. If you ask these questions about the subject and you take a genuine interest in your teachers and other staff members consistently, they will eventually help you accomplish your goals. It’s just a matter of time.
Also, you have to understand this:
School is the only time in life where you can ask for something and get it with the only price being that you are curious and willing to put in the work.
Read that again.
Let me reveal something to you.
Adults don’t give a dang hoot about other adults.
But, the one thing every level-headed adult will always help is this:
Children.
Chances are if you are reading this post, you are a child in high school or about to go into high school or a parent or someone who just feels that school is a waste of time.
If you are in a K-12 program (elementary, middle, high school), the people who are there are paid to assist you in achieving your career goals.
They have no choice but to help you.
If they refuse to help you, they can lose their job.
Hence, because of your youth, you have the ultimate leverage to ask for whatever you want.
This is powerful in business since typically, you have to pay a lot of money to receive the service equivalent to “WTF cares?”
I’m sure you know what that acronym means, right?
It’s not a good one.
If you don’t know what it means, look it up and you’ll know it’s not good.
In school, any staff member can’t give you this attitude.
They have to submit to your requests when it comes to asking for the right piece of knowledge about a topic.
This means you can ask about any topic you want and they must, at the very minimum, recommend you resources to learn from.
In school, you don’t have to shy away from asking for what you want in life.
Do you want to learn Physics?
There’s a Physics staff member right there waiting to help you.
Do you want to learn advanced math that no one ever dares to know?
Ask the most well-connected math teacher in the school and they’ll direct you to it.
Do you want to win scholarships and graduate debt-free?
Guess what your guidance counselor has to do:
He or she MUST provide you with all of the resources and must work with you to help you achieve this provided that you do the work to win those scholarships.
Do you know what happens if they don’t help you and you ask for help?
Exactly.
They’re left without a job and a $2,000 monthly mortgage payment to pay on top of all of the other bills life brings.
They have to help you.
And to take this a step further, they have to help you achieve ANY career goal you set your mind to.
If it’s being a business owner or a wealthy real estate investor, they must direct you to the right resources and connect you with those who are successful in these endeavors so that you can achieve this career goal.
It’s going to be very difficult to find an environment where people HAVE to support you.
School is the only place where you can find this support.
Of course, for a goal like being a business owner or a wealthy person, it could be difficult to get all of the resources you need from school alone, but they would need to give you a full faith effort to give you the correct support.
So, if you want to pursue anything, your first stop should be to introduce yourself to your guidance counselor the very first chance you get and display a positive attitude.
As you build the relationship with your counselor, you’ll start talking about career goals, and eventually, you’ll bring this up.
It’s only a matter of time from that point as to when you’ll receive the help you need.
Seriously, take advantage of school while you are there. It’s a free ticket to numerous benefits. Good luck finding a deal like that on this planet.
Is School a Waste Of Time?
No.
End of story.
Some parts of it might be annoying and useless and it can certainly be improved as research shows. Of course, school alone won’t help you put a Lamborghini in the garage.
If you know that college/university isn’t for you, going to high school might feel like you are pulling teeth at the dentist’s office. It can be annoying and pointless at times.
On the same token, you can use school as a tool to achieve what you want. Note the word tool.
Read the sentence again if you must.
The key is to have the right mindset about it and to make the most of it.
In layman’s terms, I encourage you to take a step back and identify what your goal in life is.
If you don’t know what your goal is, I encourage you to read this post here to assist you.
Of course, as a kid, I understand that you still won’t know what you want to do after doing the activity. It’s normal to not know what you want at your age.
Whether you have a goal or don’t have a goal, I want you to take what you are thinking about doing and write it on a sheet of paper.
Do it for about 5 minutes.
Then, I want you to do some research and work backward to find out what you need to achieve those goals.
For instance, let’s say I wanted to become a doctor.
If I work backward, I might do something like:
- My goal: Be a doctor
- To become a doctor, I must complete a residency
- To complete a residency, I must attend medical school
- To get into medical school, I must score high on the MCAT and get at least a 3.7 GPA, all while participating in the correct extracurricular activities
- Since I don’t know how to create a portfolio that can get me into medical school, I must speak to someone who knows how to create a winning application to get into medical school. I can pay an expert or I can talk to my counselor.
- To avoid paying for the expert, I can speak to my counselor.
- To speak to my counselor, I must be in high school.
Do you see what I am doing?
I am working backward to identify WHY I need to do something.
This is what you need to do with each of the goals you are thinking in your mind.
Work from you achieving the goal backward to where you are now. It will outline every step you need to take to achieve the goal.
If you don’t know a step, do a Google search or ask someone you trust to know what the next step in your roadmap should be.
As you are coming up with these steps, high school should pop out last as either a necessity or as the most efficient resource for getting what you want, regardless of your goal.
Note that it’s a tool to help you get what you need.
It’s how you use the tool that matters.
Use it well.
Ways to Make School Better
Here are ways that school can be made better and some things you can do to improve your school experience:
1. Regarding parenting, all states should have a parenting license requirement before having a child and there should be assigned duties as to what topics a parent should educate their child on along with periodic checks to see whether the parent is helping their child learn the skills required to be self-sufficient.
2. School is too fast for you? If you are a parent, check to see if your child has a learning disability. It might not be your child’s fault. A clinical psychologist and a Special Education teacher will help develop a plan for how your child will be educated based on their needs.
If your child does not have a learning disability, take a parenting class or read “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie to talk to your child correctly before addressing the problem(s) with him or her.
If you are a student, evaluate your studying habits. That might be the problem. Read this article here to receive assistance on this.
3. Regarding students spending too much time in school, this is a subject that needs to be researched further. More time in school could be the problem, but it might not be.
It could require seeing what’s working for other countries like Finland and China, which continually rank among the top education systems in the world. This could also involve seeing what’s not working and evaluating, from that evidence, why a longer school day is worse.
4. Regarding tests being a drag and stressful, it’s an unavoidable reality. Tests are the best way to assess your knowledge.
But, don’t think of it as a stressful experience. From my experience, simply implement the correct study habits and you shouldn’t have to worry about tests.
Treat each test like you’ll get a 100% on each of them and your scores will be higher than you think while enjoying the process. Test-taking will be like a game when you try it!
5. Devote classes that teach students the principles of success like mindset, goal-setting, productivity, self-belief, discipline, etc. These are the type of classes that will shape the way students (and you if you are a student) think about school and life. It’ll put you all on another level when it comes to thinking about success.
6. Teach investing fundamentals. This is to get students to see the value in what they are doing and to know the costs and benefits of doing something. Doing this will help students understand why they need to do something. As a result, they’ll put more effort into what they are doing and do their tasks well.
7. Teach kids real-world skills like learning how to sell, negotiation, personal finance, investing in real estate, how to buy a house the correct way, how to legally write off taxes, finding a job, how to interview, institute mandatory cooking classes, classes on how to fix a car, how to buy a car, classes on how to fix things in the household, etc.
These are necessary skills for not only self-sufficiency, but to become wealthy, which if achieved, will greatly enhance a person’s happiness and health and make them more likely to give back to the community.
8. A long shot, but allow all children the opportunity to have access to very successful people in whatever the child is interested in pursuing.
This will allow the children to pick the brain of those who are extremely successful and receive key insights as to what it will take to be successful in whatever they are thinking about doing.
Example: Those interested in becoming entrepreneurs, allow them to access successful entrepreneurs and allow students to pick their brains (perhaps bring a Lamborghini on a campus or take a field trip to an entrepreneur’s mansion or private jet and allow the entrepreneur to say how school got them there so that students see the value in school to help them achieve their goals). Same thing goes for every other profession.
9. Tailor programs to each student’s interests
This will motivate the student to become interested in learning the topic and seeing the relevance of the program’s material to what they want to do.
Remember, school is a product, the student (and their parents) are customers. Show how school is the best educational product for helping them get what they want and they will be loyal to going to school and staying off of the streets.
Closing
Hopefully, this post answered many of your questions regarding whether school is a waste of time or not and what could be done to improve it for you.
If you found this post helpful, definitely consider subscribing to Join the Island, which produces the world’s best content on helping you become more productive and reach your full potential so you can achieve the highest success possible in school, college, and in your career.
Until next time,
This is Evan signing off.
PS: Comment below with what you got out of the post. It’d be great to see how this post helped your life in some way.
FAQ
1. Why is School Unhealthy?
The answer to this question lies in your perspective. Remember, you are what your mind thinks. Think positively about school and it will be healthy. Think negatively about school and it will NOT be healthy.
2. Who Made School?
3. How Do You Skip a School Day?
Through an excused absence.
4. How Can I legally skip school?
Through an excused absence.
5. Will School Call My Parents if I Skip?
It depends on each school’s protocol, but most likely, yes, especially if there are frequent tardies and absences.
6. Who Invented Homework?
7. How Do I Ignore My Teacher?
Seriously? Please don’t.
However, if you have a legitimate concern, talk to them or to someone you trust to resolve your problem involving the teacher.
8. Why Do Schools Exist?
This is a great question that, honestly, requires a book to discuss. In short, from a historical perspective (Id have to read into this further to confirm this for you), as populations grew, families realized that there had to be a more efficient way to educate the youth.
Hence, children from different families were put together in a place where they could all be taught at once.
Horace Mann essentially did this in the United States. Every child would go to the same environment so that a fair playing ground for everyone when it came to advancing in society and to make it possible for everyone to learn in a common environment so that education can be delivered more efficiently.
Even today, it’s a great idea. It’s just that the content needs to be updated to reflect what you need to know today.
9. What happens if a kid doesn’t go to school?
It depends on the situation.
If it’s because of excused absences and/or tardies, a lot of coordination would need to be made between the student, the parent, the teacher(s), and potentially the administration to make up all of the work and tests that need to be made up.
If it’s because of unexcused absences and/or tardies, some pretty bad consequences.
Believe it or not, it is a crime called truancy where a parent can be ordered to send the kid to school, pay fines attend parenting classes, etc.
In short, go to class!
10. How do I convince my mom to let me skip school?
Unless you are REALLY sick, don’t try to be like Ferris Bueller.
Go to class.
11. Why is school so stressful?
It can be because of several things.
It might be because you are not studying correctly or have poor time management skills.
In this case, this is something you need to work on.
In other cases where you have a terrible teacher (believe me, they are out there) or a classmate who is being a bully, this is a problem and you have every right to be stressed.
You don’t deserve that environment.
You need to report this to your parents, a school administrator, a trusted friend, or a trusted teacher.
They are the ones who can best assist you regarding your situation.
12. What are some quotes on school being a waste of time?
Evan Cruz
Evan Cruz is the founder of Join the Island, the website committed to helping young adults become massively productive and reach their full potential.
He has been featured on Vox, OnlineU, and UpJourney. He has also a cited human relations expert and college expert.
He graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Civil Engineering.
Read more about Evan and Join the Island here.
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