Education Is The Key.

            The key purpose of education is to benefit people by lifting them in a better place mentally, physically and emotionally. The world, society and even school have declared that the first step of success is to be educated; people without education are known as ignorant, less ethical and a moral hazard. When I was in high school, people who always got into trouble, or people normally are thought of as troublemakers are the kids with lower academic grades. Even though it is not true all the time, this is what people assume to be. Also, people are more likely to trust a statement made by a well-educated man instead of an uncivilized one. So, the level of education can be one of the considerations to judge one’s moral quality, and a way to change one’s social status. Moreover, you can seek your passion of life through education. I was inspired by my English 102 teacher to start to care more about South America and Central America’s left behind children. So, I volunteered in a local orphanage in Costa Rica this summer. I really liked it, and I found my passion, which is to help more kids and provide them an education opportunity.

The certificate I got from volunteer in Costa Rica this summer.

          Education comes to us in many ways in our lives, and is also a life long topic. The book Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer is about the true story of young Christopher McCandless’ journey to pursue of his passion to live in the wild. Right after Chris graduated from Emory University, he donated all his savings to charity and left his family behind to find adventure. Chris’ education helps him to survive many times in his journey, though he is penniless. The Passion Project video made by Chabot students talks about the importance for students to have a passion and why the teachers need to be passionate about teaching their students in the class. Then Jeff Duncan Andrade’s speech, Growing Roses InConcrete describes how you can grow roses in concrete, if you have enough patience and passion to do it. And he also states how education can make a difference in one’s life and the possible deal breakers for getting that education.

            In this paper, based on the support from the book Into the Wild, the video materials and my personal experience, I will create a discussion about the value of education. The value is to get people’s voices be heard, stimulate passion into going farther, and helping to end the poverty cycle. And the obstacles for education are the student and teacher’s lack of passion, and money. Also, we will look for the possible solutions for the obstacles, and some strategies in education, and to improve our educational system.

     

     The value of education is to let people’s voices be heard. The value of a person can be based on the education he or she has, uneducated people will not get the same attention as the educated people when they both speak out for their rights. Education can help to improve people’s social status and enhance their moral awareness. Education is the essential condition for achieving our goals, and it is a weapon we have to help us bear the hardship. In the book Into The Wild, Chris wants to help more people who are disadvantaged, but he doesn’t want to get more education to do it. His mom Billie tries to persuade him: “Go to college, get a law degree and then you’ll be able to have a real impact”(114). Education can enhance people’s power, and enhance their effect on the society. Without an education, people sometimes don’t buy what you say because they assume you lack of knowledge and are not trustworthy. To be able to have a bigger impact of the society, education is essential. The people who are uneducated will always be considered as moral hazards and a social liability.

            Another value of education is that it can stimulate passion, and assist it in going farther. Passion can be something really small and meaningless to the others, but which instills you with energy and excitement to do something everyday. Not everybody’s passion meets the standard rule of the universe, passions exists only to please you. The book Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer is a non-fiction novel that tells the true story of Christopher McCandless’ journey to pursue his passion, which is to feed the hungry and live in the wild. Chris is a very intelligent young man who grew up in an upper middle class family; he graduated from Emory University with high cumulative average. Krakauer stated:

“ Toward the end of June, Chris, still in Atlanta, mailed his parents a copy of his final grade report: A in Apartheid and South African Society and History of Anthropological Thought; A minus in Contemporary African politics and the Food crisis in Africa”(21).

He studies the harsh reality from the book, and tries to understand why people are so bad to each other and come up with a strategy to help the disadvantaged people. Education has stimulated Chris’ passion to help to poor and created a fundamental ability for him to do so. Unlike the other kids from wealthy family, Chris cared about the lives in poverty, and is willing to help the poor. Chris drove around the poor side of the town and handed out hamburgers for the homeless when he was in high school. The education he gets assists his passion to be active in real life.

             An investment in education is the most efficient way to reducing poverty. Oakland, one of the most dangerous cities, has the highest crime rates and lowest graduation rates in the United States. It is notorious that people can get killed on the street in Oakland without doing anything. People from the Bay Area and San Francisco are alert and on guard when they get close to Oakland. Jeff Duncan Andrade came of age in Oakland, and he graduated from university and got his Ph.D. in associate professor of Raza. Unlike the other men who find a high paying job after they receive a high degree in education, Andrade went back to Oakland and spent 18 years teaching in Oakland public high school. Jeff Andrade stated: “ The point of education is not to escape poverty, it’s to change the poverty.” Jeff Duncan Andrade used his knowledge to change the poverty he lived in and started a program called “Step to College”, which gave students extra tutoring and counseling. The ray of hope has lit up many students’ lives, instead of dropping out of school and joining a gang, the students volunteer to stay after school and get help for homework till midnight. Finally, 24/26 students in the program got into colleges and did make the impossible possible.

            Even though to be educated is fundamental right for all citizens, there are some obstacles that make education very difficult for the students. According to National Center for Education Statistics, the total dropout rates for the whole United States in 2010 is 7.4%. The world, society and even the school have declared that the first step of success is to be educated, people without education are known as ignorant, less ethical and a moral hazard. If people have an opportunity to receive an education, why do they drop out?

One of the reasons students drop out of school is because they have no passion for education due to the lack of motivation from the teacher. The video of the “Student Lectures Teacher” is an example of how the lack of passion in teaching will increase the dropout rate of school. Jeff Bliss is a student of Duncanville High School, he was ranting at his history teacher on the way out of the classroom. He stated: “You want the kids come into your class and want them get excited about this. You need come in here and make them excited…you can’t expect them to change just because you tell them.” Pass down the handouts, read it to yourself and class dismissed can be everyday routine in the class when the teacher is lazy and feel no need to make a real connection with the kids. Actually, Jeff Bliss was a returning student; he dropped out of school for the same reason, which is the teacher’s lack of passion in teaching. So, the lack of passion in teaching is one of the obstacles to education, and makes the students not want to keep discovering themselves through education.

Money is one of the major obstacles of education. Everything in the world has its price, if you don’t have enough money to just survive, how can you go to school and be educated? Many of the students in junior college are really intelligent, they are qualified and able to get into many UC schools, but because they can’t pay for their tuition, they have to go to a junior college to continue their education. Some people can’t even have two meals a day or a place to sleep, and walk miles to school everyday. Money matters a lot to them; they will put education off just to get money to survive. I had a friend who had to work days and nights to help the family out, and she had hard time paying for her tuition. She is not qualified for financial aid because her father made more than $5,000 a month, but she has 6 siblings and her mother is a housewife. The whole family depends on her father’s wage. If she didn’t work, she couldn’t pay for her tuition and gas to go to school. She told me if she got fired she would not make it to school.

 There may be plenty of different obstacles for education, but there always are some solutions to help us overcome the obstacles. Students have hard time learning when the teacher is lacking passion in teaching. Steve Irwin states: “I believe that education is all about being excited about something. Seeing passion and enthusiasm helps push an educational message”. If the teacher is not passionate about what she or he is teaching, how can the students find the excitement in education?  So it’s really important for the teacher to keep their passion of teaching, if they don’t, teachers are not doing their job. And when you fill out the evaluation forms for the teacher, you really need to mention it and be honest in the evaluation. Also, you can talk to the principle of school and report the dispassionate teacher. And for the people who have concerns about money, they can find a part time job close to their house or go to a career center at school and ask for help. Also, there are many scholarships offered at our school. Students should not be afraid to send out applications and get rewarded for continuing with school and doing a good job in class.

A good teacher is one who inspires learning with passionate teaching. The students will learn better with a passionate teacher and be more willing to learn, as well. Imagine you are sitting in a classroom for 6 hours listen to the boring lectures and taking quizzes, do you find excitement in education? And do you want to seek out your passion in education? The video “The Passion Project” was made by Chabot College Students, and described the importance of obtaining passion in the classroom. Karina stated in the video: “Some texts were really hard for me and those were really inspiring and the teachers were really good and they inspired me to be myself or try to tap into that self that I haven’t found yet.” Inspiring students to learn more and use it to improve themselves is what a teacher should be doing. Teachers are in the position to connect the education to the students, and instill passion about education for the students to easily absorb. If a teacher only know how to deliver materials without passion, why do we need a teacher, why not a not a reading robot? Just like Ray stated in the video: “ If a teacher can be motivational we can feel successful even after failing.” It’s a long journey to seek passion, chase passion and achieve passion. If we don’t have the ability to take risks, it will be too hard to continue. A good teacher should help the students learn from failures, to practice taking risks and seek for their passion of lives in education. Therefore, teachers’ mission is to inspire students with better understanding of education, and of seeking their passions for their lives.

Education should not be narrow or confined to the textbook; we need more sources for education. Life experience is also important for education, we couldn’t be successful in life if we only know how to write well, or draw well. We need to know how to survive in reality; we need lessons of real life to be part of our education. Chris graduated from university with good grades, he liked to read and he thinks that the education from school cannot fulfill his desires for education. And he starts his journey to Alaska and gets some real life experiences. In one of the letters Chris sent, he states:

“The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun”(57).

Chris is confident about his education making him ready for the adventure. But in fact, he lacked basic education relevant to the to adventure and this got him killed in Alaska. According to Alaskan Park Ranger Peter Christian,

“When you consider McCandless from my perspective, you quickly see that what he did wasn't even particularly daring, just stupid, tragic, and inconsiderate. First off, he spent very little time learning how to actually live in the wild. He arrived at the Stampede Trail without even a map of the area. If he had a good map he could have walked out of his predicament... Essentially, Chris McCandless committed suicide."

If Chris had a map before he entered Alaska, if he had a better pair of rain boots, a sharper hunting knife and enough food, do you think he would have died in Alaska? The lack of education of real life experience causes Chris’ death in Alaska. His education of surviving in the wild was far from enough; he was too inexperienced to say that his college degree can prove him to be qualified to live in the wild. And the education we receive today from school is not very useful for us if we suddenly lose every essential supply for living. So, our education need more sources and add in more real life experiences.

            Thus, the value of education is that it can decide where people stand in society. Education is the key to unlocking the justice and fairness of the world, and breaking the distance between people. Nobody will listen to what we say if we are uneducated; nobody will care what we think and how we live. We couldn’t go further with our passion without education to support us, and our success won’t be proven if we are uneducated. Passion in education is very important to prevent the obstacles from defeating us. The absence of passion in education will cause students to drop out of school and not think education is the way to change the world. Just as Nelson Mandela states: “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” Passionate people who have passion for education are very important. The money can solve a lot of problems, and it also can create problems. It’s hard for the poor to continue their education if they don’t have any financial aid, and without this, education will not be able to reduce poverty. Moreover, the students won’t be successful if the teacher couldn’t inspire them to learn, and education need more sources to be complete and be able to let people thrive within their circumstances.