A year of interesting lessons by Heather

A year of interesting lessons by Heather - August 2013 Scholarship Essay

The most important lesson I learned in a class was self-taught. Oh, our teacher directed us, certainly, but he refused to use the word "teach". Students are learners, and learners learn from each other, not from one high-authority figure. A freshman in high school, I walked into my first day of Physical Science interested, but not excited. I liked science, but this was still a required class. Within a week, we were learning from each other. After writing our own class syllabus and critiquing each other's work, we were already well on our way to learning what interested us, what sparked us, and not simply what the school board said we were supposed to be learning. 
Note the use of the phrase “supposed to be learning”. That isn’t education. You can’t cram pages of a textbook into your head, or equations onto a paper, or chemicals into a test tube, and call it education. It’s called following directions. “But that’s how you earn good grades and graduate high school so you can go to college!” you hear everywhere. At this point, the question everyone should be asking themselves is “what is the point of education?” If it’s merely to get good grades, graduate, and attend college, then you’re set. If you want to learn to be a better citizen, a better person, and truly succeed, then I offer the following claim: education is a process. It’s a journey, an odyssey, an active search. Education is learning how to question, and question your answers, and then modify and repeat. Education is the result of your own hard work, and learning to read and generate your own thoughts and hypotheses from others’ work.
I was fortunate when I was in high school to have teachers who required, not an answer, but a process; who demanded that I show my work and then be able to defend it. I learned that education is not the score on a test or placement on a bell curve, but is instead about my own understanding. I’ve found, since then, that the value I place on my knowledge is more important than any score I could earn on an exam. Education is staying up until daylight, not to finish a term paper, but because it’s content is so enthralling that I didn’t want to stop learning. The lessons I learned my freshman year of high school have stayed with me through my first two years of college, and not only inform my own decisions, but help me share my ideas with others.