HaS My EdUcAtIoN BeEn A WoRtHwHiLe ExPeRiEnCe?

I am now in the last lap of my school life. At the end of next year I will be a soldier…a fucking patriotic soldier. Ok enough with that son of a soil thingy back to my education. If I do well I might get a chance to prolong my school education by 4 or 3 years in a local university and beyond. If I do not perform well enough I probably will have to go to a foreign university or start working. Whatever it is, I have to admit that I am on the verge of adulthood and soon I will have to make my own way through life. The question now is has the past years in school been worthwhile. How has it helped me prepare for my adult life?

Since “education” is too general to consider in all its aspects, I shall consider it only in terms of its role in school.

As school is a place where many people of diverse culture, race, religion and most important of all attitudes converge onto. The first things I learned in primary school were that they are so many different kinds of people. I experienced the pains and pleasures of getting to know my schoolmates or rather my classmates. I discovered my own strength and weakness and the social roles each of us played. I learned the meaning of tolerance, team-work, friendship as well as prejudice, selfishness and enmity. Some experiences were uplifting while some were depressing. However, when taken as a whole these experiences taught me how to handle life without getting into too much trouble. I have to cope with them. By mixing and socializing in school I learned to fit into society and live according to its norms. Without this school experience I doubt very much whether I can be a successful social animal. I would not know what to do and worst of all I would not have friends to help me in times of need.

Undeniably school taught me the basic skills of writing, reading and arithmetic without which it would be very difficult to live in this modern world. It also taught me many other things like geography, history and science. In geography I learned that there are other countries with different people living in them, speaking different languages and doing different things. I also learned about our planet earth and our place in the solar system. History taught me about people who lived before, their hopes, their dreams, their successes and their failures. It also taught me that the human race had been at war with one another since time immemorial, and that we seldom learn our lessons from the misdeeds of the past. Our progress in science taught me the enormous capability of man and how much he can achieve if he sets his mind to as task. All this knowledge remains with me and definitely they will determine how my later life will proceed, for they have moulded my character and attitude.

Sports, games and extra-curricular activities showed me that we can involve ourselves in so many different kinds of activities. I realized that most people are competitive. Very few are not. Aggressive ones normally dominate in sports and games while the quieter ones normally spend their time in less vigorous pursuits like reading and visiting the library. Unfortunately, I am not able to strike a healthy balance between two extremes. I am fairly good in some sports and games only. However, doing well in one’s studies is of primary importance and it is here that the competition is the fiercest. I learned not to underestimate others, especially the ******. He/she is the one who is going to knock all of us flat when the final results come out.

In the process of growing up in the school environment, I discovered that teachers are also human. They err and sometimes behave terribly. When I was in primary school, the picture was different. A teacher was something like superman, a know-all and a much feared and respected figure. Now I see that they like anyone of us, except they were born earlier and have a little bit more experience. That does not mean I have lost respect for them. It only means that I do not believe everything they say blindly. I have learned to reason and discriminate.

Summing up, I would say that my education had been worthwhile. I may not be the ideal student that would make an educationist happy but I know I am not a washout either. In my heart I know that the experiences in school were priceless. What I am today is the direct result of my education. The very fact that I can express my views on paper or for this case in my blog as I am doing now should vouch for the worth of my education