An Education

My title may have swayed your mind into thinking that this post is related to the movie, but it's actually about education. I've been seriously looking into Teach for America the past couple of months and it may have been because of my proximity to the Philadelphia education system. Since discovering something other than the adequate education I received growing up, it's been an issue that I've become more and more passionate about, leading to countless discussions and debates relating to the topic.

Today I had yet another discussion (albeit an accidental one) regarding education. This time, the discussion centered around a comment I made about education being free. Apparently, my counterpart had the idea that education is something that can only be paid for. I drew this conclusion by his statement that he was giving himself a free education by researching things online. I responded to this by asserting that most education is already free. He said he would need to research that and I told him that my point exactly is that not everything can be researched.

Some things you just have to experience to fully understand. I found myself explaining that the meaning of education is the acquiring of knowledge. Nowhere does it say that education must be paid for, therefore you can't refer to learning as getting "free" education. Anytime you're learning something, you're getting an education, regardless of whether or not it's free.

I've known plenty of people who didn't go to college but are still very smart and very successful. There are people who learn from the streets, from hard life experiences (see Slumdog Millionaire) or by simply being curious minds who thirst for knowledge on their own terms.

This just goes to show that you can take your education beyond the classroom, deeper. You're not limited to whatever reading your professor assigns you. You have the ability to seek out information for yourself, be it in a textbook at your local library or on Google. The Internet is literally knowledge at our fingertips, though most would rather spend it twatching or Facebook stalking.

Be a thinker. Be your own thinker. Share what you know, learn what you can, open your mind. xoxo