Notes to myself on Education:
One of the best teachers I ever had was my college French teacher. On the first day of class she announced: "This classroom is to be a safe place to make a fool of yourself because at one time or another, all of us will. We will all learn from each other's mistakes." This is one of the best teaching lessons I learned and tried to apply it to my own teaching experiences as well as general life experiences. Failures can be great teaching moments.
Your best teacher is your last mistake.
Strive for progress, not perfection.
Young people, particularly women should strive to stay in school and get a good education preparing them for a good job. Life doesn't always go as planned. Spouses die, or divorce leaving the remaining spouse to fend for themselves. Mid to late in life, perhaps with children, is not a good time to go back to school and start all over.
As adults, don't give children adult decisions they are not able to make. The adult's role is to use their experiences to guide and make the best decision for the child.
"The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows"... Sydney Harris
When you knew better, you did better.
When the student is ready the teacher will come.
Education is important because a well-educated person is one who is comfortable in a wider variety of situations.
"The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think." -- Albert Einstein
"Education is the ability to meet life's situations" --john Hibben Princeton Univ.
Once you stop learning you start dying. --Albert Einstein
"The great aim of education is not knowledge but action" -- Herbert Spencer
Investing in your education, it is the best investment you can ever make and it can't be taken away. You may not see the value now, but someday you will need it.
Take a class, learn something new. Knowledge brings new life into us. It makes us more interested and more interesting.
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Have you ever spent much time around stupid people? How much fun is that? Have you ever been in a situation where you felt like you were the most ignorant person in the group, everyone else was so much smarter than you that you didn’t feel comfortable? Do you ever wonder if people think you are not very interesting? Life getting boring?
Do you want happiness, wealth, interesting friends, to be able to take care of your loved ones, respect, to be a valuable contributor to your community, to have real choice in how you spend your time and what job you have? A good education is the foundation for all of these dreams.
Not for you, you say... you are counting on luck. There is an old Chinese proverb that says: "luck is when opportunity and preparedness meet". Think of all the opportunities lost because we weren't capable of seizing them.
Why education?
It has been said that an educated person is one who is comfortable in the widest range of circumstances because they have been exposed to a broad degree of experiences and thoughts.
Education comes in many forms. Not all of us fit well into the standard education models. But lacking any other productive method, exposing oneself to formal education is still the best path to follow. Conventionally we tend to think of getting a college education is the ultimate goal and if you want a conventional job, college education and beyond is essential. Some may think that college is not for them and for many this is true. But this does not relieve them from the responsibility of continuing some form of formal education. Whether one wants to be a mechanic or cook, formal education is essential to succeed. It is a lot cheaper and easier, in the long run, to learn from experts than to stumble along leaning from your own trial and errors.
There are many artists and craftspeople that say “I’m an independent soul, a free spirit… formal education is not for me, I can figure this out on my own”. Wishful thinking. If they would only interview others in their dream field they would soon realize the struggles creative people have in making a decent living doing their craft. They don’t call them “starving artists” for no reason. Yes there are some people that have made good money doing the arts as a profession, but how many of them do you know personally, rare aren’t they? Surveys of self-employed people have shown that most of them have other sources of income (spouses, part-time jobs, investments) to make ends meet. And usually no benefits. Don’t quit your day job to pursue a career in the arts until your artistic talent is actually producing a sustainable income.
Some of the obstacles to a good education are real and formidable:
*Kids, marriage and family responsibilities (in that order) are real distractions from continuing an educational path and can make the difficult task of schooling even harder. Many think they can do it all, but life has a way of pulling us away from our best intentions. But where there is a will to learn it is still possible.
*Age. The longer you wait to get educated the more life's distractions happen. When we are young we usually have more support systems (family, teachers and mentors) to help us get through school... these supports tend to fade away as we get older.
*Lack of desire to learn is perhaps the most difficult to overcome. Though dissatisfaction with one’s current situation is a good motivator to improve.
*Ability is another obstacle, but most of us are trainable and even little improvements can motivate us to achieve more.
*The naive think that we don’t need to continually improve our education life long. If you don't continue to improve, life will pass you by.
*In today’s economy money is often given as an excuse not to further our education. But think about this: if you think education is expensive, consider the cost of your ignorance. The average minimum wage job makes about $20,000 per year if full time. Hardly enough to live on. The average college graduate makes between $30,000 and $50,000 a year. And a Masters's degree averages $75,000. So every year you go without a college degree it is costing you 10-30 thousand dollars or more… every year.
If you can’t afford higher education talk to a local college about grants and scholarships… you would be amazed at what sort of funding is available to all students. If nothing else works, set a goal of what you want to be and take one class every quarter. Yes, this will take a long time but the time will pass anyway and where will you be in ten years without it…. still fumbling around struggling with your fading dreams and just wishing life was better. Spending money on learning is never a waste.
Finally, I think the best reason for continued education is how you will feel about yourself. Education is something no one can take away from you once you have it. Intelligence can bring happiness when nothing else will. Why settle for average, the higher you climb the less the competition and the greater the rewards. Few are willing to put aside the momentary pleasures and do the hard work to advance themselves. Decide now to be better. Start now and reach high. You may not think you need it now but you will eventually. Why wait to improve yourself and the lives you care about. There is nothing more important in your life than becoming well educated.
t.d. 2001
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