What Is Education?

Education means to ‘draw out’. Drawing things out simply means taking complicated thoughts and ideas and translating them into easier forms, or more simply learning. Many people today think that education is school, and that the only way you can get an education is going to school or post-secondary school. Though that is true, what about the period before your first day of school, and the time after you receive your Bachelor’s Degree in college, you don’t go to school for those periods. Again education simply means learning and you start learning from the moment you enter this world and you still continue to learn whether you realize it or not. Learning experiences don’t always happen in the classroom. “We think we learn from teachers, and sometimes we do. But the teachers are not always to be found in school or in great laboratories. Sometimes what we learn depends upon our own powers of insight.” (Eiseley, 167).

In the essay How I Discovered Words: A Homemade Education by Malcolm X and Alex Haley they talk about being able to learn how to read and write by yourself. A man imprisoned in the Norfolk Prison Colony became frustrated at not being able to express what he wanted to convey in letters that he wrote. So the best thing he could was get a hold of a dictionary. Then he started to handwrite each letter starting with the A’s. Then came the B’s and so on until eventually it became the whole dictionary. He would then read his handwriting back to himself aloud. Through this technique he taught himself how to read and write. This is only one of many examples where learning experiences can happen anywhere. Which means you can learn from almost every experience that life has to offer.

In the movie Dead Poets Society, John Keating the new English teacher at Welton Academy encourages his students to focus on carpe diem which is Latin for ‘seize the day’. At the very beginning the students begin to realize that they’re never going to learn a thing from this crazy teacher. But ultimately Keating teaches the boys the life lessons he wanted to impart to them through poetry will be taken to heart. These boys didn’t realize what a great opportunity they were offered until it was to late. Sometimes you learn through experiences you never thought you could. That’s why you should live life to the fullest.

If you live life to the fullest you’ll never miss out on an opportunity you wanted to take. Therefore, you are learning most of what life has to offer. So mainly, education is living life to fullest, and living life without any regrets. That means accepting every opportunity that is offered and using those experiences to the fullest.