What does it mean to be Educated

Ryan Daddino
English 5A
Shane Wood
8:00-9:15
Project Two When thinking about education, for the most part one always thinks about school. Is education really just about school or what does it mean to be educated is the big question. Each person has their own view and opinion on what it means to be “educated”. Some may say one with a college degree is “educated”. Others may say one is “educated” when they have real life learning experiences under their belt. Really who decides what it means to be “educated”? In this writing I will explain my view on what it means to be “educated” and voice some of the other opinions for the people who share similar ideas with me. One person that really analyzes what is wrong with the youth of today is Mark Edmunson. He thinks, “I want some of them to say they’ve been changed by the class… I don’t teach to amuse, to divert, or even, for that matter to be merely interesting (323).” In his writing he would talk about how kids are there to be entertained and were expecting school to be easy. I believe that may be one wrong idea that our society has about education. Students now take everything for granted and feel entitled to an easy education. I see it everyday I go to class. Students will just sit there and not interact at all. They just sit there and don’t try at all and expect to breeze through that class. Then once they realize they’re doing horrible they try to blame the teacher for not teaching good enough. When really it’s not the teacher’s responsibility at all it is the student’s job to learn. It’s really society I think that has led students to think this. I believe it starts in elementary school which it should be allowed. I think it goes wrong when junior high and high school teachers allow their students to have that mindset. I think they give them that mindset by being too easy on them. That is one of my ideas about education and how society I think has the wrong idea about it. In order for that to change and get kids more interested in education, I think the parents and teachers need to work together to try to resolve the issue. It cannot just be one or the other trying to push education. As for the parents, some parents don’t even care about education at all. When their kid gets home and complains about school or how much homework they have, many parents will agree with their child and sympathize with them that they get too much work or their teacher isn’t good enough. Well in most cases the teacher does fine and they don’t give too much homework. Most of the time students are lazy and just don’t want to get any work done. In order for that to change I think it’s important that parents support the education system. Also for parents to give positive reinforcement, like help their child with the homework they have trouble with or maybe discuss with the teacher their child is having. Something else parents can maybe think about doing is giving their child an incentive for doing well in school. Maybe like an award or something along those lines. Overall I think the parents can have a major impact on getting their kids motivated to learn and can change their kids attitude about education fairly easy. Another writer who caught my attention was Kozol in his writing “Still separate, still unequal.” Kozol looked at many different schools and found that there was always a dominant race at the schools. In the public schools and schools where it was claimed to be “ghetto” the population at those schools were mostly black and Hispanic. At the private schools and the schools that were in a better “area of town” were mostly white. These weren’t little dominances in these schools either it was a major population diversion. Kozol states, “At John F. Kennedy school 93 percent of more than 4,000 students were either black or Mexican, only 3.5 percent were white (406).” That represents that there is still a huge diversity in our schools. I believe one thing that makes our education system like this is the economics involved with it. The white people can afford to go too better school while the other races are forced to go to public schools. Now I’m not trying to be raciest but it just works itself out that way. Theres also more behind it than just the economics, there’s also the mentality aspect of it. Some of the white kids just get transferred to a different school because their parents may like the location more. Then economics doesn’t really have anything to do with it since it doesn’t cost money to transfer ones kid to another public school. Something else that Intrigues me is what people think about the segregation that takes place in the schools around the country. Many people don’t even know it exists. Or if they do know they don’t realize how much segregation there is. To put it in perspective, in one of the schools there were 93 percent blacks and Hispanics and 3.5 percent whites. That’s like 31 black and Hispanics for every white kid. What do people think about this? I’m sure if more people knew about it something might actually take place and there might be some change. People don’t like to see stuff like this. They like when everyone is mixed and everyone is happy together. When there is a major racial difference in schools it shows that some people aren’t comfortable with some other races. While people are like that, I think it’s wrong and I think it’s something we need to get over as a society. Segregation was once a big issue during MlK’s time. After that everyone thought that it disappeared. Little do they know that it never completely went away. It’s very much here to this day. On top of that It exists most in children’s lives where the youth of today will be adults of tomorrow. If we don’t do anything about this issue, it seems as though history will keep repeating itself.