Education

Ethan Nelson
Education

Education is defined online at dictionary.com as “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.” I believe that education is the gaining of knowledge through all aspects of life. You can be educated by your family and the proper way to act. You are educated not only in school and by teachers, but by the day-to-day life. You can educate yourself through experiences like by finding out that the stove is hot and not to touch it.

In “Two Ways of Seeing the River” it refers to education as the learning process of life. For example when you see a log floating down the river it means that the river is rising, and that you can tell by how the sun looks that night can tell you if the next day will be windy. We learn through experience and therefore we are educated through our life experiences.

In “The Hidden Teacher” it talks about how something in everyday life can be a hidden teacher. For example in the story Loren learned a lesson from a spider about the spider’s web. Loren was educated in her study of the web and the spider acted as the hidden teacher. This shows that anytime in everyday life you have the ability to be educated by something you see, hear, or read. The story says that you do not have to been taught by a teacher to be educated, but that you can learn and educated yourself in every day life.

In the movie The Dead Poets Society the school and all the teachers say that education is the most important thing in life. School comes first and then life. Most of the teachers and the student’s parents were very strict on this. Neil’s parents (mostly his dad) would not let him do the thing that he loved, which was acting, because he though that Neil should spent his effort on school work. Education to them was the most important thing and those who did not obey and take it seriously would get hit with a paddle. Every teacher educated the students they way that it was done before, except for one teacher. One poetry teacher told his students, “Don’t consider what the other thinks but consider what you think”. This implies that we don’t need the books and authors to teach us, but that we need to educate ourselves. We need to think for ourselves.

Therefore I think that education is the gaining of knowledge through all aspects of life. We learn from our surroundings and not just in school, from our teachers. We teach ourselves and learn from our mistakes and our curiosity.

Work Cited

The Dead Poets Society. Dir. Peter Weir. Perf. Robin Williams, Robert Sean Leonard, and Ethan Hawke. DVD. Touchstone Pictures, 1989.

Eiseley, Loren. "The Hidden Teacher." Seeing Metaphors: 167-169.

Twain, Mark. "Two Ways of Seeing the River." Seeing Nature.