Is conventional education a waste of time?

Education in its truest sense really has no borders and is a lifelong process. It is a continuous learning process wherein it teaches you various folds of life. I personally feel the schooling process should be changed in such a way that it opens the doors to constant learning, independent thinking and create socially responsible and empowered citizens. The more commonly found view of education, widely held in India, has typically included functional literacy, sciences and a curriculum that has remained mostly traditional for many years. There is a major difference in the education system of US over India. In US the scope of learning as such is very promising and a student has lot of diversity to learn his area of interest as compared to India. Over here, in schools and colleges teachers teach, whatever is printed in the book and ones that is finished they assume their job is done but i feel it is the exact opposite which happens in west. In west students are being taught various ways of solving problems, they take sessions for lateral thinking, team outing and they also teach communication and analytical skills which is very important in today's world. In India parents also need to change their mindset and should understand the area of interest of their child and then groom him/her in that particular field. And one most important attribute of education is to respect money and to invest it properly when they grow up. But in our schooling no one teaches us and we too don't care to learn at that point of time. But in west especially in US and UK students are being taught how to invest your money, how to make use of your money so that it doubles the amount and that's the reason you see more numbers of entrepreneurs and business man. I strongly feel people have considered education as granted; they feel it's about getting few degrees as a qualification. Rather then this, students should take their field of interest and should contribute to the nation and to the society as a whole. Today’s education is not producing empowered individuals who can participate in a democracy. Worse, it does not even assure most students with the means of livelihood. This is one of the reasons why we need to look beyond the borders of conventional education.