Myopia Dystopia by Katie

Myopia Dystopia by Katie - May 2020 Scholarship Essay

Imagine a world without school. Some may find this too difficult to imagine. A world that would not have standardized tests, or tardies, or scary upperclassmen and school bullies? What world is this? But it would also be a world without equality, without opportunities for the individual, without the dignity and freedom of the creative spirit that all humans have gnawing deep inside their souls.

The affluent children of the 21st century are a peculiar sect indeed. We have grown accustomed to the zeitgeist which is the system of modern public education. We have grown cold to those who once lived in the world aforementioned. We have grown indifferent to those now still living in it.

Perhaps civilization has surmounted one form of myopia only to arrive at the next.
Perhaps in our haste to educate the masses, we forgot to educate the person.

I propose to you a prediction, a problem, and a solution. I predict that in 50 years, education will become so widespread in affluent countries that it will cease to mean anything at all. Advances in science, technology, and the arts have naturally affected the way we educate. The arena of learning has been growing at unprecedented rates. For example, consider the calculator. In ages past, the counting board was used for calculations. Flash forward to today: fourteen-year olds in their second period Geometry classes are using high-tech calculators that do arithmetic, solve complex equations, and even give you a colorized little graph while they are at it. This is beyond anything that our ancestors could have fathomed.

Now, for the problem. It seems to be almost a law of nature that whatever was once a luxury is now obligatory. The automobile was once a tool to make man’s life easier. Now, one could hardly support their family without one. It is no longer a nice toy, but a necessity for life itself in the modern world. In the same manner will the growth of education affect us. Who will care if you have a PhD, if Mr. Jones down the street has one just like you? And who cares if you have a fancy degree, if that becomes the bare minimum for survival?

And finally, the solution: we must still seek to expand education to all, while at the same time making higher education (university level and up) more challenging. It would be futile to try to unearth the mountain which is educational advancement. It would be immoral to prevent all from the right to an education. Therefore, only by making education more accessible, but also more challenging, can we restore the value of education in the future.