There is allegedly a movement afoot to defend the "right" to an education. Imagine my surprise to discover that education is a right. In all the books I've ever read, only socialist authors have ever advocated education as a "right", and that was not the education that they imply in this. The movement doesn't talk about budget cuts, better teachers, and the obligation of students to perform. It doesn't talk about access to more information, debate, discussion, analysis, and exposure to methods and experiments. It asks for diplomas without dissertations. Since when is education a right?
I do not see students fight as hard for an education inside the classroom as they do when they march out on the quad. We don't even teach people how to think, reason and read. Instead, we teach them what to think. This isn't about education. It's about a cause.
I oppose the endeavor to bouy up education at the price of higher taxes. That which we obtain too easily we esteem to lightly. I paid a great deal for my education. I paid the price in High School with good grades, which earned me scholarship money. I worked 40 hour weeks all summer and 20 hours every week during the semester to earn enough of my own money to pay for it. I sat down and studied every day instead of networking games with my dormmates and neighbors. I didn't take out loans I never intended to repay like some people I know as a way to get others to subsidize my education. I am for education, and I think too many people take it for granted.
My department turns away 25% of applicants to biology courses every semester. However, by the time the semester is over, 25% of the seats are vacant. The system is now such, what with lower admissions standards and the Millenium "scholarship" that anyone who can pay their bill and is awake and online at the right time to register for an open slot can take our courses. Many of them are ill prepared for success. Every semester I have taught, at least one student has come into my office in search of help when it was TOO LATE TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT.
Before you say I am anti-education, talk to my students. Before you say I don't care about our kids, come and watch me teach. I am among the more popular of our instructors, and I love my job. What I don't love is those who squander an opportunity because they expect me to spoon feed them that for which I scraped and struggled.
Thomas Jefferson said that every man who ever amounted to anything had a part in his own education. Since I left college, I have continued to think, to reason, to read, and learned new things of philosophy, economics, science, mathematics, history, literature, "gymnastics" and language. I have made myself the man I am. I graduated from the public school system, but I am what I am in spite of it, not because of it. I believe that college is what you take from it. You can go to a "small" and "undistinguished" school and come out wise and powerful. One of my favorite professors in college and one of the men I most esteem in academia was the only member of the department who never went to an ivy league school, and he earned his PhD from the University of Nebraska.
Education as presently constituted impoverishes the minds of the people. Although I am pained when students fail the course, I understand how important it is to hold people to a high standard who wish to be in nursing, dentistry, and other parts of the medical profession. Nobody in the department likes to teach Biology 189 because it is a weeder course, which is how I got to teach in the first place. I thought that maybe I could make a difference even in the lives of those who had to retake it.
Rights never come from Government. Said Inga Barks, "There is God and then there is government. God is greater than government, and government doesn't like that." Government and politicians and their ilk have established an expectation in your mind for education and set themselves up as your benefactors. As soon as the government becomes the grantor of rights, they have all power to take anything from you. God made man, and men made government. Men get their rights from God and government gets its from men. Politicians have fooled you. They want you to think that liberty and struggle are bad for men. This is not about saving education at all.
One of my favorite quotes and one very unknown is this from Thomas Paine's Common Sense. "This therefore is the origin and rise of government, namely a mode made necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world." We do not need more laws and government. We need more virtue. As men rise in virtue, they rise in everything else that is worth having and that lasts.
Government is not the answer to your problems. It is the source. Stop looking to it and look to yourself. Make something of yourself and educate yourself. If you really believe in fighting for education do it in the classroom. Go out and earn it.
I do not see students fight as hard for an education inside the classroom as they do when they march out on the quad. We don't even teach people how to think, reason and read. Instead, we teach them what to think. This isn't about education. It's about a cause.
I oppose the endeavor to bouy up education at the price of higher taxes. That which we obtain too easily we esteem to lightly. I paid a great deal for my education. I paid the price in High School with good grades, which earned me scholarship money. I worked 40 hour weeks all summer and 20 hours every week during the semester to earn enough of my own money to pay for it. I sat down and studied every day instead of networking games with my dormmates and neighbors. I didn't take out loans I never intended to repay like some people I know as a way to get others to subsidize my education. I am for education, and I think too many people take it for granted.
My department turns away 25% of applicants to biology courses every semester. However, by the time the semester is over, 25% of the seats are vacant. The system is now such, what with lower admissions standards and the Millenium "scholarship" that anyone who can pay their bill and is awake and online at the right time to register for an open slot can take our courses. Many of them are ill prepared for success. Every semester I have taught, at least one student has come into my office in search of help when it was TOO LATE TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT.
Before you say I am anti-education, talk to my students. Before you say I don't care about our kids, come and watch me teach. I am among the more popular of our instructors, and I love my job. What I don't love is those who squander an opportunity because they expect me to spoon feed them that for which I scraped and struggled.
Thomas Jefferson said that every man who ever amounted to anything had a part in his own education. Since I left college, I have continued to think, to reason, to read, and learned new things of philosophy, economics, science, mathematics, history, literature, "gymnastics" and language. I have made myself the man I am. I graduated from the public school system, but I am what I am in spite of it, not because of it. I believe that college is what you take from it. You can go to a "small" and "undistinguished" school and come out wise and powerful. One of my favorite professors in college and one of the men I most esteem in academia was the only member of the department who never went to an ivy league school, and he earned his PhD from the University of Nebraska.
Education as presently constituted impoverishes the minds of the people. Although I am pained when students fail the course, I understand how important it is to hold people to a high standard who wish to be in nursing, dentistry, and other parts of the medical profession. Nobody in the department likes to teach Biology 189 because it is a weeder course, which is how I got to teach in the first place. I thought that maybe I could make a difference even in the lives of those who had to retake it.
Rights never come from Government. Said Inga Barks, "There is God and then there is government. God is greater than government, and government doesn't like that." Government and politicians and their ilk have established an expectation in your mind for education and set themselves up as your benefactors. As soon as the government becomes the grantor of rights, they have all power to take anything from you. God made man, and men made government. Men get their rights from God and government gets its from men. Politicians have fooled you. They want you to think that liberty and struggle are bad for men. This is not about saving education at all.
One of my favorite quotes and one very unknown is this from Thomas Paine's Common Sense. "This therefore is the origin and rise of government, namely a mode made necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world." We do not need more laws and government. We need more virtue. As men rise in virtue, they rise in everything else that is worth having and that lasts.
Government is not the answer to your problems. It is the source. Stop looking to it and look to yourself. Make something of yourself and educate yourself. If you really believe in fighting for education do it in the classroom. Go out and earn it.
1 comment:
As always, I am overcome, both with your eloquence and with your logic. I have admired your passion for education as one of your students and I continue to admire your passion in your fight to preserve it. I wish you the best and I offer my support in your endeavors. Virtue may be difficult to find these days, but you are proof that it exists and perseveres.
Gratefully,
Brandy A. Brown
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