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Self Education Essay

Decent Essays

Within the book, “The Students Calling”, Leland Ryken states that, “All education is ultimately self-education” (15). There are multiple ways we can decipher what he is saying. In the literal sense of what he is saying, I disagree completely because it is absolutely impossible to be self-educated your entire life. On the contrary, if we are to understand the figurative meaning behind what Leland is saying, then I would agree with him because everyone learns differently than each other. Before I can begin explaining why I agree or disagree with his statement, we first have to define what he means. Then after we define what Leland Ryken said, we can then begin to understand the figurative meaning of his statement and why all education is …show more content…

Actually, no. According to the article Studying Learning in the Womb, “A relatively new body of data indicates that the learning begins before birth” (302). They were able to test this by having a group of babies breast feed and based upon two different sucking patterns the babies would hear either a recording of their mother’s voice or a recording of a random woman’s voice. Because these babies were comforted by their mother’s voice the newborn babies would prefer to suck the nipple in the way to hear their mother’s voice much more often than the other. This shows that before we are even born we are subconsciously taking in information and learning from our environment and the people around us. And while in the womb, babies mainly learn from their mother’s voice and what she consumes but even things such as stress, environmental factors such as extreme cold or heat, and other circumstances affect children in the womb.
If we interpret what Leland said literally then it is proved to be untrue. If humans, while they are still in the womb before they even have free will to choose to learn, are learning, then truly not all education is self-education. It is impossible for someone to go their entire life without interacting with another human because before we are born we are interacting with our mother and her environment.
For example, in the most extreme case a human could choose to make their own choices their entire life and have a completely self-educated life

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