What is education?

What Is Education?

According to dictionary.com, “education is the act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgment, and generally of preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life”. In my perspective, education is learning anything on your own time, or in a school. The education I’ve received includes basic skills right after being born, and learning in schools once I turned 6. Malcolm X is a good example of a self-taught education, since he spent many years studying on his own in prison. An example of a forced education is from the movie, Dead Poets Society. Also, Mark Twain’s “Two ways of seeing a river” describes his point of view on learning. It is through these examples that we learn that education is really the knowledge gained by any means necessary.
In the short story, “How I Discovered Words: A Homemade Education” by Malcolm X, we learn a great deal about his lack of education in the English language. Every time he picked up a book to read, he had such a hard time understanding them that they “might as well have been in Chinese”. He began telling of a time when he was in the Norfolk Prison Colony. He spent day after day writing every single word from the dictionary onto tablets. Eventually after writing and reviewing, he finished writing his last word. Not only did he learn words, he also learned about important names in history. This is why Malcolm X describes the dictionary as being “like a miniature encyclopedia”. It was after he finished the words in the dictionary that he was able to pick up a book and actually understand what he was reading. To Malcolm X, the ability to read awoke “some long dormant craving to be mentally alive” inside of him. The things he learned on his own is a great example of how education could be.
In the movie, The Dead Poets Society, a story is told about a private school where everyone is restricted to the studies the school sets for them. The main character, Neil Perry, does really well in this school, but his interests lie in acting. It is his English teacher, Mr. Keating, who opens his mind and tells him to do things he wants to do. Neil’s father is completely against his wishes of becoming an actor and tries to force him to become a doctor. This causes many issues with Neil and he eventually takes his own life away. This is a prime example of how forcing someone to achieve a goal they don’t want may lead to health issues such as this.
Mark Twain describes how to learn more information by reading a book more than once in “Two ways of seeing a river”. In order to learn more information by reading the same book more than once, you must be able to see it from a different point of view. While reading a book, he was able to notice things that he didn’t realize before because of this strategy. Although this method of self-education does work, eventually he wouldn’t be able to learn anything new because there are only so many ways to read it.
Since education is the process of learning, it is by far the most important thing needed for growing up. Whether it is self-taught like Malcolm X or Mark Twain, or strict like The Dead Poets Society, all of us must follow through with it in order to function in society.