“I never let my schooling interfere with my education.” Mark Twain

It can generally be agreed that formal schooling is a good thing.

However, no one should conclude that formal schooling is all there is to an education. Life teaches, the heart teaches, the intellect teaches, the conscience teaches and ultimately experience teaches. Every life experience teaches. Never let anyone with a degree tell you that they are smarter than you. All they have over you is a piece of paper that they had the good fortune or opportunity to acquire. Often all they have is the degree and little else. A degree is nothing more than a license that permits you to go and do where others may not. It has its worth but, it also has its limitation.

In addition to being a license it is also represents a sort of initiation; a baptism into an elite group and a way of thinking.

In some cases, a degree earned also indoctrinates people into a pattern of thinking that often becomes very defined. Some break out of the “degree” paradigm and actually grow, building on the rudiments that earned them their degree but, often due to economic pressure most stay within the safe confines of their indoctrination.

Some break free, others stay where they have been told to stay and never leave.

Mark Twain could not have said it any better.