Falling into Oblivion :: Education Learning Schooling Papers

Falling into OblivionEducation is the knowledge or skill obtained or developed by a education process. Education is the field of study concerned with the pedagogy of teaching and learning. The dictionary provides simple definitions of education. We are given a straightforward meaning of what education is, only according to B.F. Skinner, a renowned psychologist, education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten. Ever since I was a little girl, I was constantly reminded how important education is. I went to a Catholic school, and my entire elementary education was spent with nuns, teaching out of the Bible. I soon realized, these nuns were teaching me about people who werent formally educated. These people neer went to a structured school, like the one I felt I was being forced to attend. They never had to get up early in the morning, split up uniforms, take the bus to school, had classmates, and they were never told by different teachers what to do. Their pa rents taught them at home, and they just heard stories in the streets, and in the marketplace from their elders. No books existed, and I wasnt quite undisputable if they had anything to trace their education back to. Who, all of a sudden, decided to teach their young, and to turn that idea into a universal tradition, to keep it going for generations? I sit down there and I couldnt help but wonder why these nuns were teaching me about people, whom I saw, as uneducated. I felt the entire biblical cast was irrelevant. I thought I was in school to learn, so what could I possibly learn from people who didnt even know what a book was, or who probably couldnt read from a book even if they did? Who made the decision what we should learn or if we should even learn at all? Why drive we stressed the importance of education historically? Educations purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one. Knowledge is first acquired from open-mindedness. As much as we force want to, we cant fi lter through what is being taught to us. We cant choose the things we want to learn and claim we are educated. We cant read a book written by a black author and not know what his background is or have some knowledge and understanding of the history of his people.