School Peeves

Today was a good reminder of why I don’t like public school systems.  Don’t get me wrong.  I know it’s a necessary evil, and I’m a huge proponent of formal education.  The problem is that classroom-based education forces everyone to move along at the pace of the dumbest person in the class.  Then there’s the flip side.  Classes can easily be hijacked by self-proclaimed experts who think everyone in the class wants to benefit from their expertise.  It drives me crazy when they won’t shut up and let the instructor move forward.

I guess that’s why I prefer self-paced education above classroom education.  I mentally check out when the pace is too slow and when I feel like I’m learning nothing.  It’s painstaking.  Self-paced education enables you to move quickly – unhindered, uninterrupted. 

Luckily, my company has a wide variety of training options that are self-paced (VoDs, AoDs, eLearning, IPTV, podcasts, etc).  Certain topics, however, are taught by classroom instructors (primarily management, employee development and leadership courses).  And that’s where I found myself this week.  To be eligible for a special leadership program my executive management team wants me to attend, I had to take a couple of prerequisite courses.  Most of the time, I enjoy these courses, but this week was rough.  It was a brutal reminder of how annoying the education system can be at times.  I’m so glad I’m done with that mess (my sympathies go out to the high school and college students still in the midst). 

At times, I toy with the idea of going back and getting my MBA, but after today, I have no desire to put myself back into “the system.”  Maybe one day they’ll have a self-paced TelePresence way to get your MBA.  Now that would be cool.