What does it mean to be educated?
From kindergarten through high school, kids go to school and listen as teachers teach lessons on a wide variety of subjects. However, it is questionable as to whether schools have educated kids. In schools, kids are forced to take core academic classes where their skills are assessed based on test scores. Within a school, educated kids would be classified as the kids who have the best GPA’s, the kid who is valedictorian and those who get into National Honor Society’s. All of those are purely based on numbers, cumulative test scores throughout the year that separate kids from first honors and second honors. This numbers based school system really raises the question as to whether numbers should be used to determine the level of education someone has and to what degree do schools truly educate kids.
When discussing standardized tests, such as the SAT and ACT, it is unfair to determine whether someone is educated based off those scores, like most colleges do. Often, when people score higher on those exams, they have been to many prep courses and have had extra resources provided for them to ensure success. To be an educated person it does not matter what test scores people receive because a major factor impacting who gets the best test scores is the financial status of a family. Students who don’t have access to those forms of extra help could be viewed as less, simply because they do not have the financial ability to take extra classes for standardized tests. To make matters even worse those classes do not provide kids with an education on subjects such as math and reading to help them get better scores but instead those classes teach kids how to pick correct answers. A person’s level of education should not be determined by these false interpretations of numbers. Numbers do not show a person’s education and money cannot buy someone an education.
Education is about so much more than gaining a degree in school. For someone to be truly be educated they must have good morals and character. Someone who is truly educated will be polite and genuine. While education in school is important there is much more of an education needed than understanding World History and Algebra 2. People need to be educated on how to be civil human beings. Saying please and thank you, holding the door for someone, those are all things that people need to be educated to do. Being an educated person means that you should know how to treat other people. Education is meant to help people to see how their actions could impact someone else. Just because you have a degree or gain a diploma, that does not justify being labeled as an educated person. It clearly means that you are smart and test well but there’s other skills needed.
When thinking about schools, it is impossible to make the point that schools do not educate kids at all. For students to get an education within school, they must be driven and focused throughout their years in school and not just focus on numerical grades. While it can be difficult due to deadlines, schedules and an overwhelming number of classes, nothing will come from robotically going throughout each day. If students are stuck conforming to the ideas that school structures are terrible and that school is a miserable place to be, the education value with be minimal. However, if a student takes charge of their learning, there is a lot of information and many lessons to learn. By devoting oneself to really paying attention in classes and learning context, a student can become educated on different areas of study they may like to explore further in the future. Building relationship with other students and administrators also opens the door to new educational opportunities by gaining different people’s perspectives on topics and issues. Schools can be filled with educational opportunities but it is how a student chooses to spend their years in school that regulates how much of an education they really receive. A diploma is just a piece of paper, there must be skills and knowledge to go along with it to make school worth anything.
Thinking back on the years of childhood, school is a huge part of a kids’ life. Kids spend at least 8 hours at school each day, 5 days a week. They’re at school longer than they’re at home for 10 months out of the year. In those hours filled with lessons, collaboration and laughs, kids gain perspectives on different subjects and possible areas of interest. The point of school is to prepare kids for college, for work and simply just life. Education, however, is not limited to those hours spent in school but rather continued learning outside of the school building. Education provides us all with an in depth understanding of the world around us and more importantly a better understanding of ourselves. The level of a student’s educations cannot be determined by numbers or statistics but rather through knowledge learned both in school and out.
