In your opinion, what is the purpose of an education? by Kathryne

In your opinion, what is the purpose of an education? by Kathryne - April 2015 Scholarship Essay

Books, teachers, tireless hours of homework: so many parts compose an education, but its meaning doesn't end there. Despite what too many students believe, an education is not put in their lives to be the bane of their existence. Education is not teachers dreaming up new and innovative ways to torture the teenagers under their command or simply a long list of required homework.

No, education is, to make use of an overused cliche, is the opening of doors. Cracking open the pages of a physics textbook amounts to lighting a small flame under the student. The combination of the student and the subject have varied reactions, of course; some students react to the unexpected flame as someone once accidentally produced the first batch of chocolate chip cookies, but other students react to subjects just as well as ammonia reacts to bleach. Education's purpose is to weed out those subjects that create a violent reaction and to cultivate those subjects that transform into a beautiful accident. High school acts as the testing ground for these students. Much as mixing chemicals within the lab, students are exposed to small samples of different areas to see if the result is positive, neutral, or negative.

Once that initial observation has been made, new theories can be built and tested based on it. If an interest in history has been discovered, is it European or American history that fans the flames into a growing bonfire? Does social history act as an accelerant or a bucket of water to the embers that are barely glowing? Perhaps the original observation showed mathematics is the frontrunner. From here, we ask if calculus or statistics is the better fit. On and on the education process goes, morphing for each student to create the optimal result.

The purpose of an education may begin with books or hours of homework, but the purpose has always been to excite the students, to help them find the niche that was built for them. Becoming a slave to the stress of exams should not be the purpose of high school, and certainly not of college. Call me old fashioned, but I believe the purpose of classes in high school is not to blindly memorize the material, but to understand it and to learn it, which is missed far too often today. To create a path that is unique to each student, to find enjoyment within studies, to learn responsibility and how to efficiently complete work: that is the purpose of an education.