"Education"

Education- it's a word I've heard a lot over the course of my life. Specifically, it's been huge part of the past 3 years, as I've pursued my formal education here at school, and begun my Masters in Ed. classes through Lehigh's 5-year program. It's funny, though, for all the time that I've believed in the power of education, seeing it as one of the few things that enables individuals and gives them power over their lives, I haven't spent very much time thinking about what it means to be "educated".

Last night, I watched the film Schooling The World by Carol Black. It brought ideas to the surface that I had considered, but never really processed: that "education" doesn't have to happen in a school. And what's more, the Western-Mainstream mode of education isn't the only one.

The film makes a lot of good points about the domination of the Western culture in the "undeveloped" parts of the world, about the poverty that is created in the wake... but I think the greatest point it makes is found in this question: "What is the purpose of Education"?

This thought first occurred to me, 6 years ago, in high school. I was born in rural PA, and I knew a lot of kids who were planning on going into blue-collar jobs. They were going to work as mechanics; they wanted to drive truck or keep up the family farm. They were hard working kids who knew a lot more about how to work in their world than most of the rest of us did. And yet, as far as the rest of us were concerned, they were doomed to amount to nothing. They were the failures, the dropouts, the CPI kids (Central Pennsylvania Institute for technology: a place where students could go to develop skills as beauticians or machine workers). These kids were seen as the lowest link on the latter. They were going to do the jobs that we didn't want to, so that we (unlike them) could be successful.

I realize now, that while I didn't feel like that mindset was right, to some degree, I still bought into it. I "knew" that I didn't want to spend the rest of my life working with my hands in dirt, and thus I assumed that, deep down, no one else really wanted to either. While I didn't know exactly what I equated "success" to, I knew that it wasn't that.
                                                         Because that would be horrible.

So, I guess the real question is, "What is Success"? If there's one thing this class is teaching me, it's that there really isn't a uniform, simple answer to anything. Rather, the answer is almost always It Depends. For a question like this, you have to look back, literally to the meaning of life... what is it that would make your life worthwhile? Money? Love? Fame? Family? Compassion? I think the answer is different for all of us. And if education is supposed to be a means by which we learn how to be successful, then our educations must, in turn, be unique. If someone wants to be spend their life in business  to live and die as the CEO of a multi-million dollar company, it doesn't help them if you send them to beauty school. By the same token, if an Indian child would be happy spending their time on earth close to their family, tending their fields and living off the land, they just don't need to learn English. The ideals OUR society has created aren't the only ones.
Thank God for that.

As I learn more about what our project entails: creating opportunities in Kenya for boys to get off the streets and to get an education, one question is now very obvious. What is it, exactly, that these boys would benefit from learning? What are the needs of their society, and what resources/ ideas can we provide to really help them along their way? I'm sure that, right now, I definitely don't know the answer to that question. However, I'm excited to learn- from my research, but also from these boys. I know there's a lot of "education" to go around, and really I can't wait.