Good Education
Education is defined as acquiring skills. There are many different ways to
be
educated and many subjects that can be studied. A good education is one
that
teaches a student to think. This is proven by Edith Hamilton, Malcolm X,
and
Adrian Rich in their works to define what they believe about learning
and its
importance to our world. In Edith Hamilton's essay, The Ever-present
Past, she
described a good education as one that is modeled after the ancient
Greek's
ideas. She defines being educated as being "able to be caught up into
a
world of thought" (752). The Greeks were taught to think. They
were
cultivated on an individual level so that they knew how to conceive
ideas on
their own. During the times of the ancient Greeks students were
shown how to
appreciate poetry, music, arts, and mathematics. They carried
their education of
thought into their government and their ways of life. The
era of the ancient
Greeks was laid by the teachings of their schools and
therefore helped make them
into a notable civilization. Today, Hamilton
believes that with our set way of
teaching we are not encouraging individuals
to think. She concludes that we are
"headed towards a standardization of
minds" (756). Hamilton believes
that we need to challenge our society to
shape our educational goals after those
of the Greeks. With the problems our
world faces we should study how the Greeks
triumphed in a savage world and
how they were educated to do so. Then maybe we
can learn how to prevent the
"standardization of the minds" in our
society and avoid repeating the
ill-fated history of the ancient Greeks (754).
In Malcolm X's, "Freedom
Through Learning To Read", a chapter of his
autobiography, he describes a
good education as being able to understand life.
He wrote of how he
desired to acquire more knowledge. This inner struggle began
when he envied
his friend's intelligence and when he was unable to express
himself
eloquently in letters. From that point he began to read
everything.
Malcolm X started by copying a dictionary to learn all the
words he could. From
there he never spent fifteen minutes free time without a
book (48). As he
studied the works of Mr. Elijah Muhammad he realized how the
history of the
black Americans were not included in most books. He searched
to find a book to
learn the history of the African-Americans and finally
found a few that taught
him about slavery (49). Malcolm X said that through
his domestic education a new
world had been opened up to him. He achieved his
goal of learning to read and
through that obtain what is considered by many a
good education. He was able to
read, understand, and form ideas and opinions
based on what he had read (53).
Through reading Malcolm X was capable of
expressing his own views and our
society benefited greatly from this
self-educated man. In Adrienne Rich's,
"Claiming An Education", a speech
given at Douglass College, she
describes a good or serious education as the
study of languages, ideas, methods,
and values (58). Part of being educated
is "refusing to let others do your
thinking, naming, or talking for you"(59).
Some of the most important
things needed to fulfill intellectual independence
are to learn the ways of
rationalizing, deep discussions, and writing. Rich
writes about how it is our
own responsibility to claim an education and how
we should not sell ourselves
short (59). In order to learn we first need to
assess what we hear and read in
our courses to form an opinion (57). In order
to form an opinion, Rich says that
we have to first commit ourselves to our
studies and expect others to show us
respect. Rich describes an education as
a commitment and a responsibility (59).
Throughout these essays the main
ideas were that to be educated a student has to
be an individual and be able
to think. There are many arguments over what we
should study and how we
should be taught. There is no wrong or right way to
teach or certain subjects
that need to be studied. As long as the students are
taught to think for
themselves and have the desire to learn, they will be able
to obtain a good
education.