In this essay, I will argue that you can receive an education in multiple places and through multiple means. I will describe what being educated means to me as a foreigner who grew up in Europe and had a different schooling from the “American way”.
After viewing the short excerpt from the interview with Fareed Zakaria, I had a lot of different emotions. I was born and raised in the Netherlands, and so I grew up with the education system he described. I decided what I wanted to be when I was only 14. My schooling was geared towards fashion and design, as I had a great interest in that back then. I am a hands-on learner, and the typical education offered was hard for me as it involved mostly book smarts. I had the opportunity to go to a more technical school where I would graduate at 16 with a general degree, but also with marketable skills that could get me into the workforce right away without requiring more education. I chose fashion and design as my path, as it was something I was very passionate about. My degree from this type of high school gave me the opportunity to either further my education in the fashion and design field by attending more schooling, or to become employed and enjoy a career I had trained for. I believe the quote from Michael Roth is very fitting to this scenario, as he says:” higher education must generate useful knowledge that can benefit society, or can increase the student’s financial and social status, or can advance business and economic interests.” (Roth, Beyond The University) I benefited greatly from this type of learning, as it was geared towards hands-on learners to still make them valuable members of society without copious amounts of education.
Unfortunately for me, my life took a drastic turn when I was not able to use the education I had received, as my family moved to France for a year and then to the United States. When I went to college in America (UVSC back then), I realized that I did not have the skills to succeed easily, as my education before had been more hands-on, and everything was now in a different language as well. I struggled and started to dislike college, and decided it was not for me. I decided to work and use the limited education I had received in Europe to make my way through life. For the next 20 years, I mainly had jobs in retail as I was familiar with that and was a fast learner. I had a very fulfilling career for those 20 years, but I did not see myself doing this until retirement age or possibly beyond. I started to think about education again and the possible need for more. I had educated myself for the last 20 years in the retail industry and learned things I could not learn inside a classroom, but since I wanted to switch careers, I knew I needed more education to make that happen.
I am definitely one of the people who asked the “why” questions when it came to having to take general education classes once I signed up for UVU again. In the video from Dr. Matthew Sanders:” Becoming a learner: general education,” he explains the why so eloquently. At the 6:55 time stamp, he gets to the point of the video when he explains that general education creates a mind that helps you communicate ideas, solve problems, and enables you to have a foundation to thrive. He explains that we need education to thrive and flourish as human beings. I have discovered this to be accurate, as I myself have gone back to school to receive an education at 46 years old. In my mind, I already have an education when it comes to a lot of things, as I have worked hard my entire life to learn new skills that could help me in my career, but now that I am switching careers, I realize that I need more education to be able to do that. I actually need schooling and guidance in specific subjects so that I can become a teacher and receive a degree to do so.
To be educated is more than just a degree or college smarts. To be educated means that you never stop learning. I was learning and growing in the retail field for more than 20 years, and now that I want to switch careers, I need to continue to learn and grow, and also add some book smarts to that. “Education is a continuing process, essentially the same as freedom. At the heart of education is the commitment to moral purpose and loyalty to truth; to sense this is part of what it means to be educated in our modern world.” (William P. Tolley, What it means to be educated)
I need to continue to learn as I evolve so that I can keep up with this ever-changing world. I know I can and have received education over the years from all different sources, and that I can continue to do so. I consider myself to have a really good education when it comes to anything related to retail. For the last 9 years I have been working as a custodian at the elementary school level and have taught myself most of the things I had to know to do so. I consider myself to be a very educated person when it comes to the ins and outs of that field as well. I am now going back to school to receive more education, but in a different way. I am getting the education needed for me to pass tests that will allow me to be a teacher. I have completed 4 semesters of college so far, and I can see myself becoming more educated with each class I take. I am learning numerous things in the classes I will need for my major and in the classes that I will most likely never use in the future. All of them have educated me to some degree, and I have learned how to be a better human, student, and educator because of them.
Work
Cited:
Roth, M. S. (2014, May 23). Beyond the university: Why liberal education matters. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/beyond-the-university-why-liberal-education-matters-by-michael-s-roth/2014/05/23/a911b3fe-cef2-11e3-937f-d3026234b51c_story.html
Sanders, M. (1962). Becoming a learner: General education. Journal of General Education, 13(3), 183–195. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221473.1962.10621564
[Written for SLSS 1100 class UVU Summer 2022]
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