#3: Lost in Thought

When the Age of Enlightenment was introduced to the world in the 17^th century, society was attempting to decipher actual truth rather than what was believed to be true. Society was attempting to relinquish their narrow minded mentality that there is only one “true” or right answer to a given perspective, instead of having multiple possibilities. The purpose of the reform was to emphasize the significance of reasoning, as an alternative to the present faith, tradition and revelation aspect of reasoning. Reasoning requires us to think about the possibilities of many different perspectives, but without proper education that ability to reason can be quite complex. During this time education was not of high importance in society, and society seen no reason to establish an education system. It was thought that society was already made up of two types of individuals; those who were inherently intelligent, and those who lacked intelligence. But in order for society to make any prominent advancement, education must be present; if it isn’t then the past has the tendency to repeat itself.  Thus the importance of education began to grow and education became a requirement throughout most of the globe.

            Mr. Ken Robinson informs us that education is in the process of reforming throughout the entire country. As we take a look at our own society we see that in regards to the youth of today, education has gone down on the totem pole of importance. Robinson tells us that there are many reasons why this is to be the case. For example: the standards for education are at an all-time LOW, today’s education was not designed for this “always evolving” age and that BEFORE higher education promised an occupation after graduation when in today’s society that can be no longer guaranteed. So the students of today’s society ask their selves “why”, why do we need an education if theirs no guarantee of a job afterwards? Another point Robinson makes is that in order for education to advance we must first fix the existing problems. We must understand that there are flaws in our education system that requires some maintenance and attention. No longer do we understand the youth of today’s society, no longer do we understand the way in which they think, learn and understand contextual information and no longer does a question have one definite correct answer but instead have an unlimited amount of concepts or solutions. Robinson believes that in order for education to be of high importance again, we must first reform the ways in which it is being taught, because the old ways are extremely outdated.

            In another aspect Mr. Matthew Taylor poses the question to us: “Has education become more valuable to us than becoming a world united in peace?” Have we focused too much attention on educating ourselves and boasting about our strengths that we have neglected other globally important issues? In some aspects WE have put to much emphasis on educating ourselves and neglected our duties as a nation to become more globally diverse. Instead of being empathetic towards the diverse needs in the world we spend our time maliciously criticizing their beliefs and customs. We associate the World Trade Center attack with one group of Islamic individuals, and soon our associations become more abstract as to say that every member of the Islamic community is a terrorist. We associate a Wade Michael Page’s act of violence towards the individuals of a Sikh Temple as an act of white supremacist instead of classifying his actions as what they really were, terrorist. We must shy away from the mentality that we as Americans are the victims; we have to realize that the word “victim” does not refer to Americans, Christians, or a hardship as a whole but represents a single person caught in an act of violence. That goes for every single individual regardless of race, origin, or religion. Unless our perceptions of the world and others change and we put more focus on becoming more empathetic and globally diverse, there will be no hope for our society to evolve as a whole.

Each topic we discussed today has put emphasis on one initial point; if we hope to become united globally then we must learn to broaden our narrow minds to the possibility that the world is not full individuals who are educated or uneducated, individuals who are right or wrong or individuals who are good or evil. We must realize that these characteristics exist in all of us; they do not condemn us but enables us to all become more diverse in a world with many possibilities and perspectives.