Discussing Education with the Educated by Lakia

Discussing Education with the Educated by Lakia - March 2017 Scholarship Essay

With the myriad of pressing issues in today’s times it would almost be impossible to narrow the list down to one specific topic to discuss among a school-wide audience. But being an upcoming high school graduate and college enrollee it should come as no surprise that I’d chose to discuss education.
And as I announce this to my school-wide audience the room may fill with moans and groans and maybe a few attempts at escape. And this is all the more reason of why it is imperative to discuss education with the youth of America; education is something we have the privilege of taking advantage of because it is accessible, required, and expected of us to pursue. However, that is not the case of adolescents in other nations. And while we’re all aware of how fortunate we are to live in a country where our education is a priority as opposed to some of the more rural nations of the world, we can never fully understand this privilege and the effect it has on our entire nation until we experience it first hand, or in my case through reading it vividly from first and second hand accounts. It wasn’t until I read Half the Sky that I began to understand the effect and importance of education, even something as simple as an elementary or junior high school diploma. And that is what I would relay to my school-wide audience.
First, I would explain to them what they already know, this sounds counter-intuitive but is very important. And that is that: Education is Important, it’s something were all trained to memorize as if it’s a mantra but it’s also something we fail to internalize and truly comprehend. Education is the stepping stone to any success. And while education comes in many forms, from knowing how to mine to operating a rocket, the most widely assumed form of education is the systematic one in which students are taught an array of topics in a structured classroom. And unfortunately this form of education is rare in the less developed nations of the world, including Sub Saharan Africa, and rural Asia and Latin America. From a more pragmatic view education is necessary because it honestly accelerates the economy. Investing in education wisely is guaranteed to garner more economic return than forgoing the investment in education. This is true for every part of the world. It is proven that when more of the youth are educated, especially the females, who historically receive less education than their male counterparts, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), or the products and services produced by a country, increases. This alone shows that education is not only important to enrich one’s life but also to better the economy.
However, this may seem ironic to my school-wide audience because how can education help the economy when it is so expensive? Education is expensive, especially post-secondary education in America. This is another reason why we should be grateful for our education because it is so costly, although, we public schooled students don’t incur the cost of the education. But in rural China the elementary tuition is $13 per year, for a family that survives on less than $2 a day and often times has a family with at least three school aged children. These cost become hindrances and that is why so many youth go uneducated, especially the girls, whose education will be stopped before their brother’s because it is socially seen as an asset to invest in a boy and a cost to invest in girls.
As I leave my school-wide audience I’d like to leave them with a thought: the next time you’re wondering why you have to be at school or why you have the facetious task of memorizing concepts, don’t think, “why do I even need to learn this,” or what is this education going to do for me (there’s a long list) but instead think about what you don’t have to do for your education that countless other children and families do have to endure.