Rajpal Kaur Dadoa
Mr. McFarland
12 August 2013
English 1A
‘Education
is not preparation for life, Education is life itself’ -John Bewey
Education is a term which is more easily understood
than defined. It is process of
self-expression. A person expresses himself through his education. It opens up our mind to the outside world. It builds confidence
to make decisions , to face life, and to accept
successes and failures. It is so multi
faceted that it is difficult for me to know where
to begin discussing it , how to prioritize the many factors. It provides one with skills,
knowledge and lead to productive lifestyle. Education serves to enlighten the body, mind as well as soul. It
develops in a perspective of looking at life. It helps us build opinion and have points
of view on things in life. Education is viewed
as a vital key to success in life and knowledge has become every individuals aim and concern. Why do we need Education?
Why do we think Education is important? To have a better grip to this
complex theme we will be exploring this topic in a broad way. Soul is like a rough
carbon, and by getting education it gets polished and turns into a diamond that is
it becomes more lustrous and shines. The word
‘education’ has been derived from the Latin word “education”which means the act
of teaching or training. Thus education is regarded as “a process of drawing out from within”. Education is thus a
process of self-expression.An individual expresses himself through education. These
innate powers and potentialities are developed and drawn out through
education. It is a means of adjustment of an individual with the society. It is a
process by which he is brought into proper relationship with the ideas and Meals,customs
and traditions of the society. Learning is living. Learning is the modification of
behavior. Thus education is the process by
which the knowledge and character and behavior of an individual are formed and modified. An ideal education affords numerous
and varied opportunities for students to touch, see, smell , listen ,
hear to spark their curiosity.One’s conduct and behavior are changed and refined according
to the desired standard of the society. This is the result of education.
The list of degrees that tail an individual’s name do not mean that one is educated. It holds
a much wider perspective. In the real sense education means to evolve
from being an individual to a being , capable of not merely ‘surviving’ but living life.
It empowers an individual to think, question and see beyond the obvious . Human beings
are born with a natural tendency to think , question and see beyond the
obvious. They have a natural tendency to question and through education these questions
get an answer.
Education shapes the life of an individual, sometimes positively sometimes negatively . One of the individual who was negatively driven by education was Chris McClandless , the young boy who is the hero of the book ‘Into The Wild’ by Jon Krakaver . The book highlights the explorations of Chris who after completing his college, turned out into a hitchhiker to discover and adventure new things. He sent all his transcripts to his parents and did not use his education to any purpose . He did not start any career with his education , instead he gave up all his worldly ties and left for his own expeditions. The education maybe formal or informal drove him away from normality. The book digs deep into why and when he decided to change his lifestyle into a hitch hiker, and due to which he ended up his life at a very early age. In this essay I will explore more about what were and were the defects in education which leads the youth to take such self destructive acts .
Education shapes the life of an individual, sometimes positively sometimes negatively . One of the individual who was negatively driven by education was Chris McClandless , the young boy who is the hero of the book ‘Into The Wild’ by Jon Krakaver . The book highlights the explorations of Chris who after completing his college, turned out into a hitchhiker to discover and adventure new things. He sent all his transcripts to his parents and did not use his education to any purpose . He did not start any career with his education , instead he gave up all his worldly ties and left for his own expeditions. The education maybe formal or informal drove him away from normality. The book digs deep into why and when he decided to change his lifestyle into a hitch hiker, and due to which he ended up his life at a very early age. In this essay I will explore more about what were and were the defects in education which leads the youth to take such self destructive acts .
In the first
section of this essay I am going to open up with the general notion of education; the various forms of education and
secondly I will discuss about the importance of education in the life of an individual, And
furthermore I will explore the inter relation of the education society, how the
education shapes the society as well as society shapes the education. In the next
section of the essay the role of education in success will be explored out , and
moving on with the drawbacks of the current educational system . Than I will go
through my survival in continual of my education and what are my deal breakers with
continual of my education and how am I going to deal with them to survive in
college. The next part is about the intersection
of passion and education. The last section of the essay includes the solutions to make education more of excitement
and life than just a requirement to survive.
Education is commonly thaught of as the job
of schools, but in fact education can be gained by any
means. The child is weak , helpless and ignorant at birth. But he gradually grows and develops. He acquires knowledge and skills. He realizes thoughts into actions and satisfies his needs. He changes
his behavior according to his environment. Such changes, growth and development of the
individual are his education. This is the result of his learning and
maturation. At the start of very young age children learn to develop and use their mental ,
moral and physical powers which they acquire through various types of
education. The process of education does not only start when a child first attends
school, education begins at home. One does not
acquire knowledge only from a teache; one can learn and
receive knowledge from a parent , family member and even an
acquaintance.Education can also be
gained through informal communication
and reading books.
Education
is important as it teaches us the right behavior and good manners, thus making us civilized. It teaches us how to lead in life.
It is instrumental in the development of our values and virtues. It cultivates us into
mature individuals, individuals capable of planning for our future and taking
the right decisions in life. It gives an insight into our lives and teaches us to learn from
experiences. Education is the backbone of the society. Human becomes real human
through the education he has. He is what education makes him. It has been rightly
said that, “Without education man is
splendid slave.” It equips us with all that is needed to make our dreams come true .It
opens door to brilliant career opportunities. It brings up questions and also help us device ways to find satisfaction.
It broadens our horizons and gives us a better understanding of the world around us
and how things work. It helps people to think rationally and avoid illusions in life
.It also gives higher self esteem ,better problem solving techniques. It grants us the
power to never be enslaved, either by thaught or action.
Since education has a powerful effect on human
society, importance of education will help us understand the role of education in
the nations growth and development. It is a necessity for society. Education
fashions and models man for society. Education brings into focus the social aspects of
man .It signifies the man’s supreme position in society. Without education , human is like as it were is shut up in a windowless room. With education he finds himself a room with all its windows open to the outside world. Only best to happen to you and
look forward to a bright tomorrow. It is that phase when nothing seems impossible.
You believe in your will and you feel that you will win the world. Chris was such
passionate young boy , who believed himself to be capable of doing whatever he wants .
Although having good grades in school , he
was still unsuccessful in life as he did not do any productive work from the
knowledge he got from school as well as from home . I feel that education did not affect his life in a positive way , in
fact , he was moved by the negativities of
education. Along with understanding the importance of education in shaping the society ,
we will also be understanding that how
society affects our education system, as in Chris’s life society shaped his
behavior in he way he was . Formal education did not had that impact on him as the
society had , as Chris was disturbed by his family environment, he was unable to follow the education he received from his
school . It had such a deep impact on
him that he came to a breaking point and started avoiding human intimacy. We often
ignore the fact that social norms , customs and traditions deeply affect
education and in Chris’s life the same happened . Society
and education are tightly bound entities and hence cannot be separated . I think society in itself is an educational
institution. Social interactions give us the ability to read people . Our
customs and values shape our upbringing , thus molding our personalities. We learn from
our surroundings , We learn from our experiences. And sometimes these experiences
take us to the positive side of things and sometimes it may take us to the
negative side of the things , and we start to escape from society as Chris does.
To avoid the pain of his disturbed family he wanted to escape out from that
environment and this is one of the reasons he could not value his school education to any
use. Society needs people who are successful at what they do as a result of their
education, and as Chris did not apply his education to any use his education was useless
at all . This is just one case where education
had failed to give its exact usage, but there are so many such cases of students
like Chris where education system failed
to serve its prime purpose to them and they ended up living their life
worthless, inspite of being educated. Not only the education system is to be blamed but
also the social education ,the education one gets from the society is to be
blamed for. We need to understand the role of society in the overall development of
an individual, as we already know that even before we become a part of education
system alone , We start learning from our surroundings, and during the process
of getting ‘formal education’ in educational institutes we constantly take ‘
non formal ‘ education from society. Our interactions
with our fellow beings ,Our observations about their social behavior and our understanding of our social norms prepares
us to face life, and this is where Chris got his such a stubborn behavior from the
daily fights of his parents and their personal relationships left a deep impact on him
which molded his interest completely into the wild . True educational institutions ,
like schools, colleges and universities play a very important role in education, but we
cannot ignore the fact that we learn some of he important lessons of life from
society, and throughout this essay I will be going through all these factors which affect
the education as well as life of the individual.
In almost all socities , attending schools
and receiving an education is extremely vital and necessary if one wants to achieve
success. Of course motivation plays a great role in success but self motivation is of
utmost importance.it is upto me to decide for myself whether I want to succeed or not. I
know that I want to succeed and earn my education. ultimately my education can give
others the ability to spread knowledge to others
as well as to the world. The advancement of the society is dueto the joint knowledge of all the genious minds .The
education one earns is something that does not
just affects them , but rather affects all the people around them.
We are reminded constantly that our schools are
failing . The reporting of test scores , be they state or national , provides an excuse
for educational leaders, politicians and parents. Upon hearing the problems everyone
begins running around promising solutions in the form of new
programs , making teachers as well as educational institutes more accountable and
spending more on education.The blame game comes into play. Administrators blame the teachers
and unions and teachers vice versa; the unions blame the administrators and committees of school. Everyone says that there is problem and promises to fix it in
a way that diverts attention from them. Until we identify what the core problem
is ,we will continue to fall short in our
efforts to solve it. According to statistics thirty percent of college and university
students drop out after their first year and half of them never graduate. This is such an alarming rate. Growing up in
broken homes can adversely affect the emotional health of the student. however , even
when children are brought up in homes where both parents are present it is not
necessary that the emotional needs of the child are me, as in majority of
families today both the parents are working, the same was the case of Chris McCandless ,
both of his parents were always working due to which they lost their child and there
distances got increasing more day by day , this not only affected Chris on personal
front but also on his overall development , his education his career ,etc
everything got affected due to this . Not only his family is to be blamed for but also the
education system as during his senior year in school he was he became obsessed with
racial oppression in South Africa. (113) This ultimately shows that education was
drawning him away from the normal life , instead of trying to solve the problems and
issues e started to take them to heart and
isolating himself by seeing the human wildness , he wanted to escape from that and live in the heart of nature instead of living
with humans. Dr. Tony Wagner , author of
the global achievement gaps also brings out the problems faced by todays generation in education as well as continual
learning. He claims that the basic reason behind the fact that students in colleges as
well as in high schools are not engaged and interested in education.as they grow up the
less curious they become. They lack the critical thinking and problem solving
techniques .He also gives a solution that
the best thing to do is that they should be inspired to think and write about their problems earlier than they face them, and
also they must be asked to analyze their current situations and how to deal with
critical situations in their life in the future. One of the main reasons of students
dropping out of colleges is that they start giving priority to their problems of life rather
than their education and to solve their problems
they find it best to drop out of college. Dr, Wagner also explains that why the multiple choice system ruins the
problem solving skills as well as imagination of the students. The reasoning skills of the
students get weakend due to this. This also
further affects them as when they are faced with any critical situation in life they do not know how to deal with it. He
gives us a very good example of the failure of our education system that one
student was very passionate to become a scientist but when the education system did not
met his expectations ,he just gave up on his passion of becoming a scientist and
ended up in becoming a teacher. The education system nowadays is more of isolated
one in which the students are engaged
and connected outside of school, but totally isolated in inside of the school. Dr. Wagner points out that , “ Education is
most isolated profession in modern work life and
isolation is the enemy of improvement”. The students have better connections
and are more social outside of the school than they are inside their classes. To fix this problem the colleges and schools
need to bring in more mutual engagement to understand the needs of the students.
When the students do not find the solution to their problems in schools they try
to find out the alternate ways to get success
and end up being violent as well as
destructive in some cases. Even self destructive as Chris McCandless , He ended up
ruining his life without any soul purpose.
Secondly , not only the problem
solving skills are getting weaker of the students but also they are becoming more aggressive and
violent . Their basic requirements are not being met due to which they become more
of aggressive,stubborn and arrogant . In the speech ‘ Roses To Concrete ‘
by Jeff Andrade he also mentions some of the common issues why the students do not
perform well in schools. He emphasizes that the basic reason of the students
dropping out of the college is mainly the
un fulfillment of their needs. The needs include food , clothing , shelter, money , transportation, support , social as well as
personal etc . He follows the model of Mosley , the psychologist who purposed the pyramid of hierarchy of needs. Education becomes the second priority of the students
when their basic needs are not met. The
relationship between college and students
get parallel to each other due to this as the college is totally unaware
about the personal problems and needs of the students. The exact reason of the students dropping
out of college or continual absent from class is never known to the college
the basic preferences of the students are not given any priority in the college.
Education needs to be such which inspires the minds of the students and not merely
trains them.
As higher education is one of the key ingredients to building strong foundation for a successful future, there is not enough emphasis put on to the students personal reasons of dropping out of colleges. It imparts advanced knowledge and skills , develops character and enhances self esteem. It brings great difference in life.Being one of the students in college I am also trying to keep myself into the college . I also have many issues and problems which can and also do interfere in my college education. One of the basic deal breakers of my college education is the one and main priority of everyone ,that is financial..Most of the students in the college suffer from the same problem due to which sometimes they find it better to drop out of the classes and survive rather than get educated.as a new immigrant , I am facing financial problems. Moreover not having the residency of college . My fees as well as other expenses are too high that I am unable to take full time college , due to which my study is going at a very slow pace. Although , I didn’t give up due to the fees issue but it can be one of the reasons of y dropping out of college as my family is not good standing financially. Another reason of my dropping out could be personal issues I am facing now. They are an obstruction in my education. I feel depressed and helpless as well a I loss my self confidence at some points which ultimately affects my performance in my classes. They divert my focus and attention from studies . This makes it challenging for me to thrive in college.Although I have such issues which can be a break point in my education but as it is well said that every key has a lock to it, in the same way every problem has a solution. So does my problem has a solution . I have recently got a job that I was looking for near to my home due to my transportation problem . As I don’t have any means of transportation of my own I was searching for a job which would be convienient to me for transportation. As now have got the job my fees problem will be solved so will be my personal ones. As I will ne busy for whole of the time , My attention will be totally on work and education and so I can get over these two potential deal breakers in my education.
As higher education is one of the key ingredients to building strong foundation for a successful future, there is not enough emphasis put on to the students personal reasons of dropping out of colleges. It imparts advanced knowledge and skills , develops character and enhances self esteem. It brings great difference in life.Being one of the students in college I am also trying to keep myself into the college . I also have many issues and problems which can and also do interfere in my college education. One of the basic deal breakers of my college education is the one and main priority of everyone ,that is financial..Most of the students in the college suffer from the same problem due to which sometimes they find it better to drop out of the classes and survive rather than get educated.as a new immigrant , I am facing financial problems. Moreover not having the residency of college . My fees as well as other expenses are too high that I am unable to take full time college , due to which my study is going at a very slow pace. Although , I didn’t give up due to the fees issue but it can be one of the reasons of y dropping out of college as my family is not good standing financially. Another reason of my dropping out could be personal issues I am facing now. They are an obstruction in my education. I feel depressed and helpless as well a I loss my self confidence at some points which ultimately affects my performance in my classes. They divert my focus and attention from studies . This makes it challenging for me to thrive in college.Although I have such issues which can be a break point in my education but as it is well said that every key has a lock to it, in the same way every problem has a solution. So does my problem has a solution . I have recently got a job that I was looking for near to my home due to my transportation problem . As I don’t have any means of transportation of my own I was searching for a job which would be convienient to me for transportation. As now have got the job my fees problem will be solved so will be my personal ones. As I will ne busy for whole of the time , My attention will be totally on work and education and so I can get over these two potential deal breakers in my education.
Moreover, the absence of interaction between
student and teacher may children to grow up to become mindless drones. Students are
not just vessels to be filled with knowledge ,They are alive, and must be allowed
to grow on their own. For instance , Jeff bliss one of the students of Duncen
ville high school recently set a very good example of
self awareness of ones own education. Self analyzing that what we want , and why ,when and where of ones own desires
helps us to get to know more of ourselves. The students must be knowing about
what to get from teacher and how to
get . Jeff bliss gives his opinion and expresses his desire of getting education by right means in a very calm and
educating style. He expressed in a very right attitude to his lazy teacher that her teaching
style does not suit the students. Jeff argues
that , “ There are kids in here
that don’t learn like that they need to learn face to face. You want kids to come in class ,
you gotta make them excited.” His opinion is absolutely correct as in the sense
that the teachers job is to fill the students with their knowledge , but I don’t think
that this is the only job of the teacher. The teacher also needs to present the material
in a way that is interesting to the
students. The teachers should not only give the information to the students but also make sure the technique they use allows
the student to critically apply the material to their real life. Teaching should be
treated as a profession , and not as an occupation. The teacher needs to bring life in the
class , create interest In the students to learn. if every student is like Jeff , that
is they know their priorities than education system can be improved in a lot better way.it
is the right of the student to speak up when his requirement is not being met.
He sets up an example for all other students of the school as well as of the
nation that they should not be confined to their comfort zones and get trapped in
themselves, but instead should come out of their shells and begin to explore and learn new
things in a passionate style , and not by merely reading packets. They must read
and learn by excitement.
Passion is
another requirement which is necessary to make education more interesting.it is a
strong desire that sparks in you which keeps you burning inside day and night , that drives you to accomplish your goals and
fills you with determination and enthusiasm to accomplish your goals and
desires. Sara Smolinsky the main character in
the novel ‘Bread Givers’ by Anzia
Yezierska had the passion to get education , and it was her that strong will and passion
for education that she succeeded to meet her
goal of getting educated. She did not care about any storms that came in her way of getting education . So , passion is
another way that leads to education as well as
success.it is a well known fact that when an egg is broken from outside , it destroys
life, but when it is broken from inside it creates new life , a new life is originated
from it.so big things always happen from inside , and passion is that inside force
which keeps on motivating to you until you reach your desired goal.
In conclusion , education should
consist of training and development in the field of interest of students .it should help the youth
define their career objectives, decide what they want from life and enable them to achieve
what they wish to. Education must help the students build a skill set and work
on the skills required . It should open doors for them to new opportunities. It should
help them find their avenues to persue their intersests.it should enable them to
venture into new fields and explore new areas.it must help them to set reachable
goals and realize them.
Work Cited
Krakauer , Jon . Into The Wild . New York : Villard Books
, 1997. Print
Yezierska ,
Anzia , Bread Givers . New York :
Persea Books , 2003 . Print
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