When I walked into this class on the first day and I heard the theme of it, I told myself, “Wow, this is going to be one hard class to comprehend.” The mere idea of school not being everything contradicted beliefs that I have shaped my whole life around. I don’t have many hobbies or passions (really none at all, actually) and my main focus has always been about school. I love to learn, so it never affected me by taking me away from something I loved to do, therefore I never thought to really think about the formal education system.

Yet here this class was: centered on rethinking education and the process of it that I had come to be so fond of. At first, the theories presented were definitely hard to swallow. For example, our first reading was on Bach and how he encouraged the idea that kids did not need school if they could be as passionate and dedicated to a subject or certain career field like he was. I disagreed with this, shaking my head in amusement the entire time I read it. Kids need school – this was always something I firmly believed in. You can have passion and intelligence, but nowadays, without a degree, your chances of getting far in the field of your choice are low. I thought that this was what the class was going to be about and I was determined to keep my mindset from wavering in a direction that challenged formal education. But the more we read other works, the more I realized that the class wasn’t trying to turn one away from formal education. Instead, the class’ goal was to open a student’s mind to other ways that he or she can become educated.

Reading about Douglass and Malcolm X’s makeshift methods of educating themselves makes me realize how fortunate I am to have learned in a formal environment that has guided me well, but has also given me a good amount of freedom to think for myself. It also reminds me of this photo of a child from the Philippines that went viral. The photo showed the child studying and doing his homework on a wooden stool under the light from a McDonald’s. It was late at night, so one would expect he’d be doing his assignments in the safety of his own home, under his own lamp. The child is homeless, however, but his determination to learn and educate himself was much stronger than any embarrassment one would have at having to resort to such methods. This small, 9-year-old boy is so dedicated to leaving a life of poverty and yet, he does not want to become a businessman, politician, or some other wealthy figure. He wishes to become a police officer in order to help the Philippines become a safe and better place. Not only is this young boy becoming educated in books and schoolwork, but also is educating himself in the needs of humanity. He is learning how to become an even better person, something you would never truly learn about just from school, and I sincerely hope to see more people follow in his footsteps.

Education doesn’t have to come from the classroom. Education is independence. Education is passion. You make your own education. It starts with the basics, such as reading and writing, but you build your education to fit your own learning and life needs. One never stops learning – even when school ends, education does not. Life itself is filled with lessons from different subjects, most of which do not pertain to those taught at school. Out of all the texts we’ve read, I think Emerson’s speech on “The American Scholar” has struck the strongest chord within me. Optimism is a beautiful thing, but in this day and age, things must be done to achieve a better future for all of mankind. I’m not one to speak, as I am a follower, but I hope to one day follow a leader who is the manifestation of this phrase: “Man hopes: genius creates” (Emerson Paragraph 15).

This class, as hard as some of the readings were, was definitely an experience that I don’t regret taking. It challenged me to think harder about what education is, to broaden my perspective on what it means to learn. I have a much more open-minded view of education as a whole now, and this class is the reason for it.