How could you expect innovation and production from those raised on consumerism?
In school: Consuming subjects and curriculums
In vacation: Consuming products, services, movies, and games
In college: Consuming subjects again
After college: Consuming courses
Q: What did they produce after living for 23 or 25 years and graduating from college?
A: A large number of them just produced some answers in some exams, and a large number of these answers they already consumed similar answers to them during the curriculum.
Q: For 25 years, that is all they produced? And they are wondering why they couldn’t find jobs, or even if they found jobs why they struggle to produce a great impact innovation-driven work?
A: But they were building foundations throughout their lives which are very important. How could you neglect this?
Yes, but these foundations lack context and seem very rigid when they are fed instead of asking for them. An education driven by consumption and not answering real-life relevant questions. So they seem that they didn’t appreciate the foundations enough to spend enough time on them to prepare them for the jobs. So even those foundations are not strong enough.
Lack of context may kill curiosity. Pushing young children and youth to continuously consume kills their ability to produce.
Maybe they don’t understand that jobs exist to solve existing problems. They thought that a predefined curriculum is all there is to achieve success in life. They seem not to understand that life still has a huge number of unanswered questions in all fields. Learning is a life-long process.
But what is the solution then?
To take responsibility and exert more effort to figure out why things they study are set in this way? What are the connections? How is this relevant to the market? How the solutions were developed? What is the history of science and technology progression? They should force their curiosity to kick in and keep asking. To make groups to discuss these things together. Their goal shouldn’t be to finish the projects before the deadline but to understand how the projects connect their curriculum together, and why their professors chose these projects specifically. They could make market research and suggest different projects to their professors and start producing straight a head from year one in college, and preferrable from school. To figure out the context. To connect theory and application. To be guided by innovative professors, and teachers that want to change the education to be better, and to add evaluations for real understanding that connects to the real world.
Graduation and getting grades shouldn’t be the goal. But understanding the connections, context, and production should be from the goals.
To graduate producers that produce products and services to serve their community after consuming curriculums may be better than graduating consumers that consume curriculums to pass the exams.
Allah bless our master Muhammad and his family.
