Why go to school?

CEBU, Philippines - There's a funny statement by school dropouts that a person needs only enough education to get by in the marketplace. Exactly right. But that marketplace is the whole of life itself.

That a person needs academic learning to survive in the marketplace of life is an idea that is not often understood fully. For example, some people argue, "What benefit is to be gained from studying philosophy? How many professional philosophers are there, making a lucrative living seeking the meaning of life, or challenging the eternal verities?"

Many people would claim, as well, that even such a core subject as Mathematics is not necessary at the level enforced by the academic curriculum. And there's History, Sociology, Economics, and a host of other such subjects that doesn't seem to have any immediate relevance to one's everyday life. And so one is prompted to ask: Why go to school?

The very experience of living is necessarily a process of education. But it is education not as pure as the type one gets at school. Education gained through raw life experience often lacks the expert view of things.

At school, students have convenient access to the wisdom of great men and women of the past and present. And studies are structured in a system that has been proven to bring profound learning in a relatively short span of time. What would otherwise take a lifetime of raw experience takes only a few years at school.

It is the capacity for education that distinguishes humans above the other animals, the other creatures that crawl the earth. And the human skill of systematically transferring knowledge from one generation to the next all the more secures the race's standing as superior creatures. The school system is a marvelous human invention.

People who underestimate the importance of attending school lose a great deal of opportunity to further develop themselves, their views and understanding of life and of the world. The very breadth of academic education empowers people in a practical way. It is so easy to spot confidence in the ways of a well-schooled person.

But if students merely regard learning, studying, as the means to earn certain accolades or credits on their scholastic records, then we may attain only little. Attending school is primarily intended to enhance their humanity. All such students become at school is be like parrots with no sense to their blabber.

The school is an institution where students learn to better themselves - to realize their potential, to become the best they can. They become qualified to participate in intelligent conversations, because they have been academically oriented in the major areas of life - the very subjects that others think to have no relevance to their everyday life. And they have a gracious way of dealing with their ignorance about certain things - because they have learned social graces at school, too.

A good, broad academic education is an asset for a lifetime - it is not just a key to open the doors to various professions. It is a social resource, enabling one to mix with many people.

The world itself is a more interesting place to the educated person. Where the uneducated may just see the rocks and the sea, the learned will notice the wave-cut platform, and the variegated influence of erosion on different stone formations. To the uneducated the green atop the roofs may seem like an unhealthy algae, but the educated will see it as evidence of a chemical reaction - the once golden copper having reacted with the oxygen in the air to form a dark copper oxide, which in turn reacts with rainwater to form a green copper hydroxide.

Academic education also widens the student's horizons. The student experiences the world beyond his immediate surroundings. He sees things differently - because now he thinks differently. There is a certain order to his thoughts, from which he attains a certain order in his life.

 Why go to school? Because people need to be educated to discover more of the world, of life and of themselves. Going to school is the most efficient way of learning to enjoy life the most. (FREEMAN)