The Importance of Education

I find it ironic how much I want to be a teacher, and yet I feel that the education system is so flawed. I want to teach people the power of words. I want people to feel how much people can express themselves and make themselves heard. I want people to realize how strong a story can be, anyone's story. But the education system focuses more on what must be taught; the strict requirements that students must learn, to be determined as successful. Education is so highly valued, but valued how, now that college is becoming more of a requirement to be successful. What happened to the days when high school was enough to broaden your horizons. Yes, the world is growing, but it's also getting smaller and smarter. People can't keep up, and its becoming more and more expensive to be knowledgeable, rather than smart.

I don't know how I feel about focused education; I have known, essentially, what I have wanted to do since I was in eighth grade; I wanted to work with words. But I could as easily see myself teaching as I could advocating, being in government, or writing and publishing. All of those things attract me because they incorporate the power of words so strongly into their everyday life. So why put too much emphasis on Gen-Eds? We, as a society, think you need to narrow down you field, so we give you options. Great, good idea. But don't make someone take calculus when they're failing the class. Don't implant the Darwinism theory into someone's belief if they plan on going nowhere near the science lab. And why do we need a degree in theoretical physics or a thesis on why Oliver Wilde was gay, and therefore influenced his most famous pieces and quotes. Its Science, or English, and you should leave it at that. No one is going to care, unless you are a professor at Harvard, what your thesis was or why Newton's personality affect his laws. These are all examples, but you get the point.