Logic and Reason

When I think of education, I don't think of textbooks or desks or even the traditional classrooms. I've learned a lot over the past 13 years of my education and most of this information I will never need to use outside of the classroom. To me, that's not education. In the article "Living Savage Inequalities" underpriveledged children were given a chance to make a difference in their community. I believe that this is what education should be about. Learning shouldn't just be about equations and definitions, it should be about taking the information you learn in school and using it in your day to day activities. I think this really defines whether or not you actually learned something in school. Equations might be useful for a math test, but when you're faced with a problem outside of school, you're not going to stop and solve it using an equation. You're going to use logic and reasoning which I believe are the two most important qulatities you can achieve in school. If you don't attain these qualities during your time in the classroom, your teachers have failed you.

I have heard a lot of people say, you either have street smarts or book smarts and I've come to find that this statement is very true. This however, is unfortunate. I think that people should be allowed to have both. if teachers started handing out more application problems and less memorization problems, maybe book smarts could turn into street smarts. Education, to me, should provide you with book smarts as well as common sense smarts. I don't want to graduate college feeling scared of the world. I want to feel prepared and confident that I can solve any problem that comes my way. My schooling should prepare me for this next step in my life.

The image that I selected shows a person taking a problem and using their logic and reasoning to solve it. I believe over the course of your education, you should be learning these important life skills. i always hated when I would ask a teacher how I was going to use this information later on and they would yell at me for being a smart ass. At the time, I probably was, but now thinking back, I'm starting to realize that the teacher probably didn't have an answer to my question and that's not right. I understand that some information is required to be taught but I think every teacher should at least try to come up with a useful life skill from this information.

To me, this is what education should be about.