The Importance of Education
As an elementary student, I remember playing a game on the computer called Schoolhouse Rock. One of the phrases I remember from this game is Knowledge is Power. In some cases, knowledge can in fact be power. But currently there is no speed learn system like there is in The Prisoner, so all people who want to acquire knowledge have to be educated. Education is important because it trains the human mind, opens people to the rest of the world, and helps people find solutions to many of the world's problems.
Education trains the human mind to make the right decisions. From learning about past decisions and mistakes, we can figure out what the best path to take is in certain situations. Education helps people make the right decisions because it encourages them to be thinkers. An educated person can think of the positive and negative effects of every decision that they make and, more likely than not, they will make better decisions than an uneducated person who does not know how to reason would. All humans have some reasoning ability, but only the educated can reason and make decisions in the most efficient way. This is because their reasoning skills have been fine tuned. For example, an educated person may use his or her knowledge of science to fix a chair or to determine why their metal baseball bat is rusting. For another problem, an educated person might draw on their knowledge of English and logic to help them form an argument. For an educated person, these tasks would be very simple. But, for an uneducated person, these tasks would prove very difficult, if not impossible for some.
An uneducated person will have many difficulties in his or her life because he or she does not possess the ability to reason as well as educated people can. The training of the human mind is one of the most important values of education.
Education opens our minds to the outside world. It allows us to gain knowledge of other cultures and to learn more about our own culture. An uneducated person is shut off from the outside world. Because he or she can not read or write, the uneducated person can not gain wisdom or insight from books, magazines, or other mediums. Someone who is uneducated will not have knowledge of current events and will become isolated. On the other hand, an educated person will gain knowledge of the outside world and will be able to apply this knowledge to events in his or her own life. Instead of being isolated, an educated person will be opened to new ideas.
Education helps to solve many of the world's problems. It is a simple fact that countries with higher literacy rates generally have higher standards of living. Why is this so? It is because the countries with higher literacy rates have citizens who are better educated than the countries with lower literacy rates. One of the greatest sayings dealing with education is this, "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." This quote can be applied to education. For example, if we make small donations to troubled countries, then in reality we are really not helping them out very much. But, if we help to establish a strong education system, then the citizens will gain reasoning skills, be opened to the rest of the world, and ultimately will have a higher standard of living. Educated people can help society in many different ways. An educated people will be able to communicate ideas with each other better because they will know how to read and write. Also, the knowledge gained from education will help everyone in their careers because they will better understand what they are doing. Furthermore, education helps society because an educated people will be able to help improve the society they currently live in by applying their knowledge to the problems that they encounter. Education is necessary to increase the economic, political, and social development of any country.