Definition of a Good Education

Definition of a Good Education

  • Submitted By: inflo06
  • Date Submitted: 07/27/2008 12:09 AM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 730
  • Page: 3
  • Views: 17

Definition of A Good Education

Definition Of A good education is defined as acquiring skills. There are many different ways to be educated and many subjects that can be studied.

A good education is one that teaches a student to think. This is proven by Edith Hamilton, Malcolm X, and Adrian Rich in their works to define what they believe about learning and its importance to our world. In Edith Hamilton's essay, The Ever-present Past, she described a good education as one that is modeled after the ancient Greek's ideas. She defines being educated as being able to be caught up into a world of thought. The Greeks were taught to think. They were cultivated on an individual level so that they knew how to conceive ideas on their own. During the times of the ancient Greeks students were shown how to appreciate poetry, music, arts, and mathematics. They carried their education of thought into their government and their ways of life. The era of the ancient Greeks was laid by the teachings of their schools and therefore helped make them into a notable civilization. Today, Hamilton believes that with our set way of teaching we are not encouraging individuals to think. She concludes that we are headed towards a standardization of minds. Hamilton believes that we need to challenge our society to shape our educational goals after those of the Greeks. With the problems our world faces we should study how the Greeks triumphed in a savage world and how they were educated to do so. Then maybe we can learn how to prevent the standardization of the minds in our society and avoid repeating the ill-fated history of the ancient Greeks.
In Malcolm X's, Freedom Through Learning To Read, a chapter of his autobiography, he describes a good education as being able to understand life. He wrote of how he desired to acquire more knowledge. This inner struggle began when he envied his friend's intelligence and when he was unable to express himself eloquently in letters. From that point...

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