The Flawed System: How Our Education Fails to Prepare Us for Real Life

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In today’s fast-changing world, I honestly believe that practical skills matter way more than memorized theories. I’ve been a student all my life, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned from my own experience, it’s that theoretical knowledge alone doesn’t prepare you for real life. It might help you pass exams, but it doesn’t equip you with the tools you need to succeed outside the four walls of a classroom.

There have been so many times when I didn’t attend classes regularly, but when it was time for exams, I would just cram everything. And guess what? I passed. Sometimes, I even got really good grades. But months later, if you asked me to explain the same topic, I couldn’t. Not because I wasn’t smart, but because I never truly understood what I crammed. I was simply trying to survive the system, a system that only cares about grades and certificates, not real understanding or capability.

The educational system, especially here in Nigeria, is so focused on theory and exams that it completely forgets what education is really supposed to be about—preparing people for life. You memorize notes, pass the test, and that’s it. No one checks if you can actually apply what you learned. No one checks if you even understood it.

Right now, I’m in a university where computer science students pay close to a million naira in tuition. You’d think for that kind of money, they’d be getting hands-on training, practical exposure, real-life projects—something! But sadly, it’s mostly just theory. They learn how to write code in class but never get to actually build anything meaningful. The majority of them don't even know how to code on the laptop, and even the ones that do , had to teach themselves through YouTube videos, free coding bootcamps, and online courses. And in my head I’m just like, “So what’s the point of paying so much to go to school if you still have to learn the actual skills on your own?”

It’s frustrating. Honestly, I think it’s high time we revolutionize the entire education system. Things have changed. The world is evolving fast, and the system we have is just not catching up. These days, many companies don’t even care much about your certificate anymore. They care about what you can actually do—your skills, your creativity, your ability to solve real problems. That’s what they’re paying for.

And that’s why a lot of people are beginning to feel like school is a waste of time and money. They graduate with degrees, yet they’re still not job-ready. They feel cheated because the system didn’t prepare them for the real world. If only schools would balance theory with practice, we’d be raising a generation of people who don’t just know things in their heads but can actually do things with their hands.

In conclusion, education should go beyond the classroom. It should be about experience, about solving problems, about learning how to adapt and grow. Until our educational system realizes this, we’ll keep producing graduates who know everything on paper but can’t do anything in practice. And that’s a big problem that needs fixing—fast.

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