The Importance of Education

This article is about something I already have in my mind for quite some time. It’s about the importance of education.

Some people think, education is unnecessary, the only important thing is practice. But in my opinion you need education and the theoretical background for getting better practice.

A few days ago, I tweeted this sentences. I think education and the theoretical background are also very important but often neglected. People think education is unimportant, just try it and get practice.

But, as far as I can say this - I’m at the beginning of my university time, education is “special”. You get the theoretical background of topics to also be able to understand more complex ones, you learn how to learn, and you probably learn how to get more structured and get information yourself you hadn’t before. At least it’s what I feel.

Don’t understand me wrong, I don’t want to stop anyone from learning things the autodidactic way, in fact I did this with a lot of skills myself. Without anyone teaching me I learned how to code in Java and a lot more. I sometimes just get curious about something and try to learn how to use it and get my hands dirty.

I probably hear lessons about Java the 5th time in my life (after I learned it by myself), but I don’t think it’s unnecessary. There’s always something new, also if it’s just a little detail. You are confronted with your existing knowledge. And: There’s a difference between being able to use a tool and really knowing the tool.

I also take math lessons and we learn a lot about logic. I initially thought, why is that important? But now I find out, that’s really important. I would say every program needs to make use of the boolean algrebra. And if you have knowledge about this topic, you can probably also design your code to be more efficient.

And we learn about relations. Relations is an important topic when it comes to databases. Even after just getting a few lessons, my view already changed a lot. I finally understand what “transitive” really means.

I think, many people, especially in the US, avoid university, because it’s very expensive. Lucky as I am, I live in Germany and education is almost free. You neither have to pay for school nor university (of course you can, when you think you need something better). That’s a huge advantage because it theoretically allows everyone to study, even if they aren’t that weahlty. Reality is something different, but it’s a beginning.

To find a conclusion: Don’t avoid education. It will probably be helpful one day, even if it just tought you how to learn.

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