Image by AKMA via Flickr
Education has gotten a bad rap from a lot of people. While most politicians will say it’s too expensive and most citizens’ groups will say it’s too ineffective, one has to admit that schools do a lot of things reasonably well. They train people to work jobs, condition them to understand that success comes from delayed gratification and steady effort, and help them to get into their career paths of choice. However, education is more than that.
While having a solid work ethic is a prized trait for a person to have in society, it isn’t the only thing a person needs to be genuinely fulfilled. While a lot of the world would say to work now and be happy later, sometimes a person can manage to do both of these at once. Happiness doesn’t necessarily stem from having more leisure time. Often enough, having a passion for what one does is more important than just slaving away. The more recent generations have become infamous for this, despite having unprecedented abilities to get things done.
Ultimately, being an educated citizen comes down to having a more complete understanding of why human beings do as we do than it does to one’s mastery of algebra or ability to quote from Shakespeare. While those might be impressive outcroppings of one’s education, they are not what make someone able to function well in society and achieve their goals. Some people would even go so far as to say that the main requirement to be educated is to simply know how to achieve one’s goals. Anything else may be thought of as superfluous.
