What Does It Mean To Be Educated

I can picture being in Thomas Jones place and listening to a student wondering what the speaker is saying, their interest is not listening to the speakers, but walking the stage and the end commencement. As Thomas Jones pointed out; why did we not discuss the educated person question prior to commencement? We do need to answer the question: “What is an educated person?” (Jones)

It became clear that in order to form a sound, functional democracy, education was most essential. Every citizen, although at the time only males could be citizens, needed to have some form of education. What was it that the citizen was to learn while in school? It became clear that education itself consisted of literacy, knowledge, research and the understanding of the Bill of Rights; those are what would make democracy succeed (Barber 416). Education as it was understood not only consisted of the basics, but also consisted of the government and rights. The importance of knowledge of government was not underestimated. He described the tuning point in education as the industrial revolution. Barber says “We have watch this commercialization and privatization, a distortion of the education mission and its content, going to the heart of our schools themselves.” (417). He is arguing that devices and television programs have become diluted with advertisements and that, with programs like Channel One, they have begun to affect education in schools. Tannen, on the other hand, argues that education and its present forms gained traction with the Greeks and continued through the middle ages. She tells how young men left home to attend institutions of higher learning. Through their experiences she says, “students at these institutions were trained not to discover the truth but to argue either side of

In his essay “What Does It Mean To Be Well-Educated,” Alfie Kohn challenges the current standards that people consider crucial in order for a person to be considered well-educated and explores some interesting questions that help provide the reader with a completely different understanding, perspective, and possibility for standards of good education. At the beginning, Kohn explains how people can argue about the purpose of education, but then fail to realize and recognize whether or not education has truly been successful. Then, Kohn provides the reader with an example of his wife, a successful physician who completed her study for doctoral dissertation in anthropology from Harvard, yet still lacks some educational basics that people consider necessary factors to possess in order for a person to fit in the defined group of well-educated individuals. (Kohn 231-232). After that, Kohn explores some definitions that people set as essential measurements for determining whether or not a person is well-educated and explains why all these standard definitions fail to either evaluate a person’s knowledge or make a person knowledgeable. For example, many people consider test scores, seat time, job skills, and memorization of facts as indicators of well-education. However, Kohn explains that sitting in class for a certain amount of time, “reducing schooling to vocational preparation…to suit the demands of employers,” receiving high results on tests, and memorization of pieces of

Education should not only be looked at as attending college and passing exams to succeed in school. Nevertheless, it should be seen as the complete development of one's personality, intellectual development, and moral evolution. The system tells everyone to learn the same material, even if the students are bored and even if they’re sleeping during class. In the article “Against School”, John Taylor Gatto states, “teachers didn’t seem to know much about their subject and clearly weren’t interested in learning” (Gatto). This shows the teachers and the students disconnect from the context because either it’s irrelevant or not being taught in inspiring ways. I believe an educated person should at least have some background knowledge for a job

Choices can make or break us depending on what we do. That is what Jon Spayde attempts to convey to his audience in his 1998 Unte Reader article, “What Does it Mean to Be Educated?” He goes through many examples and arguments that could possible answer this “surprisingly tricky and two-sided question” (Spayde paragraph 1). Although the actual arguments he poses throughout his article, he uses the rhetorical devices – ethos, pathos and logos, to get his readers to accept his purpose.

What does it mean to be well educated? To be well educated it is a balance between academics and practical knowledge. Throughout this paper I will show that one does not necessarily need a college degree to be deemed as well educated. I will explore both aspects of academics and practical knowledge and how it affects individuals.

Gerald Graff insists “Street smarts beat out book smarts in our culture not because street smarts are non intellectual, as we generally suppose, but because they satisfy and intellectual thirst more thoroughly than school culture” (248). I believe that school generalizes the students to a point where academic work can be very unsatisfying. By putting them in a box, there are less chances to expand thoughts, and creating new ways of understanding. Graffs opinions on this subject are correct because many people who are successful, and contributing member of society are not formally educated. Even if they had more interest in sports rather than books, they still succeeded later in

What defines a good education and what can classics like Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave teach us about it? Many people spend their life searching for wisdom and work hard to get a good education. Without education, society does not progress and knowledge does not thrive. If a society does not let knowledge thrive then the only thing that can thrive is ignorance.

Education. A word that resonates differently with everyone, but resonates deeply nonetheless. To some it is seen as a means to maintain their current, comfortable lifestyle where  to others it is seen as nothing more than a waste of time and yet to others still it opens the door to numerous opportunities for a better life. On the most part though, our society as a whole seems to agree that education is the pathway to success. Not coincidentally, this is also the stance taken by most authors in modern day literature. This theme of education is clearly presented within two completely different texts: Mary Lawson’s Crow Lake, and David Auburn’s Proof, though not necessarily in the most traditional sense of the word. The characters in both

“Learning in the Key of Life” In “Learning in the Key of Life”, the author, Jon Spayde, makes arguments for an education centered on the humanities rather than what he describes education as “training for competitiveness”. (pg.47) He first poses the question “What does it mean to be educated?” This question, as Spayed explains, is about more than just education.

Having education doesn 't automatically make you intelligent, nor does it measure your competency. However, in today 's society, having a degree is very important for getting a good job and making money, but it does not mean that earning a degree makes you knowledgeable. In the article Importance of Education states, “Education plays a vital role in your success in the personal growth. The more you have knowledge the more you grow” (Importance of Education). If schools are supposed to help are personal growth through school. Then why do so many student lose interest in finding who they want to become or question why they are here in the first place. In the documentary movie War on Kids, Morgan Emrich a public school teacher states, “they’re taught to hate reading by being forced to read stuff that they don 't want to. It 's really rare for a kid in school to be able to choose a book that they want to read and read it” (War on Kids). As students we get force to learn what is require in order to go from one grade to another. We also get tested to see the school academic level or need to pass a standardized test in order to graduate.

Quality in education is one of the most discussed issues around the globe among educational community. There is an emerging consensus that quality in education depends on the enabling inputs, educational processes, teachers’ abilities, and learners’ characteristics and the specific context.

Education is important to be able to make informed decisions, draw conclusions from stimuli around you, and make responsible choices for not just you but the people your choices will affect. Being educated on certain topics such as the world around you will make your life easier to navigate and persuade people to agree with you. Human nature is to look up to and follow your superiors, or in this case the educated people that you admire to show you the right and wrong way to think or do something. Those people we look up to are people like: Doctors, professors, scientists, parents, media people and more. All of who we trust because they are more educated on a certain topic. Being an educated person will also do you well in the workforce which ties into being a productive citizens which are both responsibilities we possess as

ideas and feelings and can use them to draw over all conclusions to answer the

The term ‘education’ can mean many things. An education is the collective knowledge a person has, but what does an education mean? Although an education can be paid for, no one can physically give you an education, so it is not a gift. There are societal situations where an education is a necessity, but not many globally. Education is a tool to be utilized differently in every part of the world. Knowledge is power, but some knowledge is more powerful depending on your region. If you are part a primitive tribe in New Guinea, a person that is considered to be educated may be illiterate. Whereas in America, an illiterate person would have trouble functioning at all in society. Education is a tool that is to be