Most people are constant in their acknowledgement of education as a key factor for human development. The notion of education evokes images of classrooms and lecture halls, in the thoughts of many. But education should transcend the narrow confines of classrooms and lecture halls and embrace creative self-pursuits to enliven new ideas in our minds.
It is traditionally thought that education gives graduates greater financial independence and gears up society for the eradication of poverty. Our human landscape is teeming with graduates of various disciplines, unemployed and miserably eking out a living. Wallowing in the labour market, our disappointed graduates are becoming aware that the current educational curriculum is not satisfactory for them. Our current educational modules are bereft of disciplines that teach basic life skills like emotional intelligence, a very vital skill required in managing ourselves and our relationships, and in cultivating teamwork. Tools of creative innovation and problem-solving based on sterling new ideas are also missing.
Creativity on top of empowering ideas does sometimes triumph in our society. Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, and Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, are glaring examples of this phenomenon. The fact that both of them are dropouts from college further highlights the need to enrich our educational curriculum with disciplines encouraging the expansion of our minds with new ideas. Techniques of generating and blending ideas together, in order to create something novel, should be inculcated into our academic modules. Empowering ideas glories in the name of success. Absorbing and regurgitating cold data in the classroom does not secure anyone the certainty of success in life. It is in the arena of creativity that success and fulfilment will meet. Creativity thrives on nurturing new ideas. Fresh ideas could motivate one to throw a unique light on an existing problem and proffer matchless solutions; it could also highlight innovative ways of improving cohesiveness in teams. Success resounds to the measure of innovative ideas. A new idea is a novel stimulus that energizes our brains and improves our memory and learning capacity; current research in neuroscience has proved this fact. The novelty of new ideas empowers our brains and enables us to be more effective in life; it motivates us to be more adventurous in the pursuit of new ideas and in the expression of our talents, our unique leanings.
Expressing our talents is one of the veritable means of courting fulfilment in life, and fresh ideas are often what provides the platform for our talents to thrive. Nine-to-five jobs with an attendant monthly pay check leave us wanting for more, that cannot be defined materially. When we set ourselves to work at expanding our mind with new ideas, we open grand vistas of creativity leaning towards success and authentic happiness. Success that is defined strictly in material terms lacks fulfilment and authenticity. Most time, we buy material things because of the impression we want to create in other people’s minds, because of how we want other people to see us. When we allow other people to dictate how we feel, we lose our identity. To become a pawn in the hands of other people is to fill yourself with dissatisfaction. Exploring new ideas in a bid to launch our creativity will imbue us with a sprightly quality demonstrating that we have nothing to reproach ourselves with.
Education must expand beyond the walls of our classroom for it to lead us to fulfilment and authentic happiness. Getting into expanding our mind with refreshing ideas and taking up with effective ways of harnessing our uniqueness, validates our creativeness and encourages true success and fulfilment to befriend us. The hapless experiences of our unemployed graduates should teach us some good lessons and provide us with good reasons to expand our current educational module. Bandying certificates about and looking outwards instead of inwards has not brought much success or fulfilment to them. Ideas are what will draw us to the core of our being and enable us to unmask our talents. To pursue our talents is to empower ourselves. We don’t have to wait for Government institutions to take the lead in this regard. We should engage in self-education to remedy any perceived deficiencies in our education curriculum. For us to draw greater effectiveness into our lives, we should not hesitate to leave our comfortable routines and embrace helpful unsettling ideas. To prepare grandaunts effectively for working life, we should encourage the habit of looking out for empowering ideas that will inspire them to expand their minds, uncover and pursue their talents, stand out in the job market and add a unique value to their place of work.