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The great words of “The Three Character Scriptures” once said: “If jade is not shaped, it will not become a tool; if man dos not learn, he will not know the meaning [of life].” For this very reason education has become an important factor in any culture and has developed into many different forms over the years.
First and most importantly, in order to discover the most effective way to promote education, we must realize what education really is and why it is important. From my perspective, education is a series of understandings, being able to comprehend facts and information. This will lead to the formation of personal opinions and new methods, which will contribute onto the general collection of knowledge.
This forever building on the foundation of previous discoveries is what separates mental exploration from physical or manual labor. Manual labor only produces limited and temporary results, but the accumulation of knowledge through education can give you tools which can be used in many forms of application. In other words, work and physical labor will give a man a fish and he will be fed for a day, but learning and education can equip a man with skills of how to fish. Understanding “how to fish” is both a major benefit for the man himself and the rest of society.
Learning can allow us to become independent thinkers and have the chance to dig deeper in personal fields of interest; it can also further the overall development of man. If we do not equip ourselves with the accumulated knowledge of the past, then all of our pursuits will be like running on a treadmill; no real progress will be made.
After establishing the importance of education, the next question would be how we should approach it. But first, I would like to introduce (what I believe to be) the two major roots to human actions.
There are two main cases when we perform any action: we are pushed to do something by an outside force, or we are pulled towards it by a driving force within ourselves. "X" is the goal "O" is ourselves "-->" is a force
-> O X this is the external force(parents, teachers) exerting their superior power "for our own good"
O -> X this is the internal force of curiousity driving us toward our goal
When parents plan class after class for their children on the weekend, they are pushing their children towards education. However, when we are drawn by curiosity to learning; that is the internal pull. In life, there are two types of rewards: the immediate and the eventual. When kids fail to see any immediate rewards from education, they rebel against it. As a result, many parents and teachers push them even harder, causing them to dislike education even more. This eventually turns into an endless cycle which ends up frustrating everyone, and the kid does not make any progress. In less extreme cases, kids often learn to satisfy their parents’ requests, and so rely on others to encourage them and motivate them. But when the time comes for them to make their own decisions, they discover they have no interest in learning and turn off the path. From these examples we can conclude that too much “push” from outer forces doesn’t benefit the student.
There is a Chinese saying, “Interest is the best teacher”. So the best way to promote education would be for children to become interested in learning. But waiting for children to find their own interest in education is too time-consuming, and children tend to veer off and find more enjoyable activities. I believe parents should push their children to explore many different fields of activity and learning, to stimulate their curiosity, and to introduce the importance of education, but to allow them to motivate themselves afterward.
As an essential shaper of the future, education and its effective application is a highly discussed theme, so pitfalls and detours along the way are natural problems we must face. For example, in recent years, education has been reduced to short-term rewards in the form of scores and points.
The grading system found in schools can show what happens when we focus on the details and not on the long run. When we try to find the most accurate grading system, we forget why comparing and contrasting are important in the first place.
I believe the creator of exams originally meant for them to be a useful tool to assess students on whether or not they have understood the material. But nowadays learning has regressed into a pursuit of points and marks;
