There is something reassuring about school because you usually know what matters. Someone tells you, it is written down, explained and helpfully repeated, and you know what you are expected to do.
Even mistakes feel manageable, since they are counted, corrected and then left behind, often in red ink. That sense of order feels comforting and creates the belief that effort and results follow a clear and reliable path.
Life does not offer the same kind of order. It rarely explains what it expects, and it does not announce the topic in advance or tell you how things will be judged.
Sometimes it does not even bother to decide and simply moves on, which can feel unfair, especially when you are still waiting to understand what went wrong.
Education does many things well. It teaches knowledge, focus and how to work within clear rules. It also teaches a habit that stays with people long after school ends, which is the habit of looking first for the criteria, then for what will be assessed, and finally for the safest way forward. In classrooms, this habit makes sense and is often praised. Outside them, it can quietly become limiting, mainly because life does not provide marking schemes or sample answers.
As time goes on, learning often starts to feel less like exploration and more like preparation. There is preparation for exams, preparation for the next stage and preparation for something always waiting just ahead. Discovery does not disappear, but it becomes less important. It stays interesting, but not urgent. Curiosity learns to wait its turn, usually until the timetable allows, which does not happen very often.
People adjust, as people always do. They become efficient and selective, learning how to notice what deserves attention and what can be ignored without consequences. Mistakes turn into things to handle carefully rather than chances to look more closely and learn. Questions become strategic, and strong performance begins to feel safer than trying something new. Curiosity does not disappear, but it becomes less practical in daily decisions.
Life responds to this way of thinking with polite indifference. It does not reward efficiency in the same way exams do. Instead, it tests patience when progress slows or when effort brings no clear result. It tests judgement when instructions are missing and choices do not look clearly right or wrong. It tests self-control when reactions feel reasonable but unhelpful. These moments do not arrive labelled as lessons. They appear as delays, disappointments, awkward talks, or decisions that feel uncomfortable no matter how long you think about them.
Somewhere between receiving the certificate and facing the first serious responsibility, character is supposed to settle in on its own. When that does not happen, confusion follows. The education was solid. The results were strong. Surely that should have been enough.
This is often where conversations about education slow down. Attention shifts to reform, systems and assessment design. These discussions matter, but they often miss something more basic. Education prepares people for clarity, while life brings uncertainty. Expecting one to fully prepare us for the other creates disappointment on both sides, not because education lacks value, but because its role has limits.
Education was never meant to practise every possible uncertainty. It organises knowledge, builds structure and offers direction. Life removes that structure and asks what remains. It asks how people respond when answers are unclear, when plans change and when effort does not lead to quick results, none of which come with advance notice.
Education can give people knowledge, ways of thinking and a sense of direction, while leaving space for uncertainty, judgement and growth beyond the classroom. In return, people are expected to carry responsibility forward, to keep learning once the structure disappears, and to accept that patience, character, and good judgement develop through experience rather than instruction.
What deserves more attention is how much we quietly depend on education to do work that only experience can complete. Education opens the door, but life decides what happens after you step through it. That moment surprises many people, not because education failed, but because life asks questions that no syllabus ever promised to answer, and it expects an answer anyway.
Dr Khalfan Hamed Al Harrasi
The author is an academic and researcher
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