Education
I sit in my AP US history (APUSH) classroom, the day before we have an in-class document-based question (DBQ) assessment. The air of stress and angst fills the room, as students chatter about what they plan on writing about. I hear the same things, over and over. I turn to the student next to me, and ask him what he plans to write about. “I’m just doing what everyone else is doing,” he replies with a shrug. I think to myself, I bet Mr. Smith is going to hate reading the same essay about 180 times.
Why is it that students would write one thing, even though they know everyone else is doing the same? Three words, for the grade. It has become a habit of students to skip out on taking a risk, writing about the topic less written about, and rather write the essay every other student plans to write, just because it is safe. Teachers encourage collaboration, but the benefits of collaboration are squashed when the endpoint is every single student with the same essay. Because they all use the same arguments, rather than using each other to improve their own ideas, intellectual individuality is lost. Many believe the safest route to a good grade is the essay with the least amount of risk. But the safest route is not the one that leads to being truly educated. As high-school students, we are presented with opportunities each and every day to use the knowledge we are given to take risks and to shape ourselves as learners and people. Some take advantage of those opportunities and take the risks, others don’t. There is no point in knowledge if one doesn’t use it to its full potential by taking the risk.
The dictionary definition of educate is: “give intellectual, moral, and social instruction to (someone, especially a child), typically at a school or university.” The dictionary definition of educated is: “having been educated.” To assume that just because one has had education they are educated is not necessarily true, because the level of one’s education should be judged by how they use it. To assume that just because one has had education means they are truly educated is an assumption, because it is what a student does with their education that determines if they are truly educated.
To be truly educated is to use the education one has been given to become an individual with intellectual freedom and the ability to use what has learned to shape oneself as an independent individual.
When every single student out of the 180 students taking APUSH writes the same essay, because they know it is safe and will get them the good grade, represents the opposite of individualism and intellectual freedom. It is not about the knowledge given to each student, it is how they use it that renders them truly educated. To use knowledge to form one’s own identity and shape the world around them is being truly educated.
We are a society of individuals. We are all given different opportunities, but it is not about our different opportunities, it is how they are used that dictates success. As students, we are all working parts of a system. This system runs off a mixture of the curriculum of the education system and our own curiosity. We are part of a system that some feel to be constrictive and limiting. The system that trains us to be students, through a certain mold. However some students choose to break out of that mold and take control of their own learning. This is where the importance of our own curiosity emerges, because it is our job as students to constantly be asking questions, to constantly question authority and ask the why’s. It is those why’s that allow us to push that curriculum, where freedom feels unreachable. Many students feel as though they lack control, control over the content they learn, the books they read, the assignments they must do. The truth is, students have much more control than they realize they have, and much of that is derived from their own curiosity.
They may not be able to contest reading Shakespeare, or learning about the mitochondria. However in traditional schooling, there are reasons for these building blocks that students may not see. Students have the power to take control beyond these minor roadblocks, in order to take their education to higher levels. This control stems from what students choose to do with the education they have been provided. It is what students do with texts such as Shakespeare that is where their control stems. James Carter, high school English teacher once said to me about my fixed mindset, “You were in control before, you just didn’t fully realize it because you have been well trained by a system that you have outgrown.” The system that I felt had caged me in for my twelve years of education, I had finally broken free of, and it was because of my own decision to take control and become an individual within her educational setting. I did this by first, realizing I had the control I believed I lacked, and second, realizing that my education was what I made of it, and it was up to me to shape herself as an individual using the education I had been given by taking risks I had previously been petrified to take.
As individuals of a democratic society, it is our duty to make decisions that shape our world. There are many ways in which the manifestation of education shapes us, and that is where the importance of being truly educated lies. One crucial example of this is the policies of our democratic nation. We vote in our nation, therefore we must be educated on how to make decisions that will best form us into the democratic nation that we are. This is where one importance of education, and the need to reach being truly educated lies. In order for our society to function, individuals must use the knowledge they have been given to create intellectual freedom.
Thinking back to the individual sitting in that APUSH classroom, surrounded by a sea of intellectual zombies, focused on all the wrong things in light of education. These are the future leaders of our nation, and sadly we must accept the fact that many have lost their intellectual freedom in search of other treasures. There is no treasure more valuable than intellectual freedom and that is gained by using the education one has been blessed with to its fullest potential, to push past constrictions, roadblocks, and to always question why. That is why taking the risk should be encouraged, asking more questions should be encouraged. In order to reach true education, students must reach the mindset where they know they have control, and they use it to extract the most of the education and opportunities they have been given.
