What is the purpose of education?
 
This was one of the questions that stuck with me from my very brief stint as a teacher education major.
 
It was something that I had never actually taken the time to articulate an answer to.
 
I always just kind of assumed it was as simple as you went to school to learn… but what are you learning and why?
 
For a significant amount of my life I felt I was simply learning a collection of facts and how to solve a series of equations, without actually learning the context that makes those relevant or how to interpret them for myself. I felt like it was just someone filling the bucket of my mind with information.
 
I didn’t see why I was learning much of what I did, or how it would be useful to me later in life.
 
This contributed heavily to my poor grades at times and my desire to drop out of the public school system in Durango.
 
When the only things you feel are worth learning come outside of the classroom, why continue to force yourself to attend and go through the motions?
 
I realize now that this was a poor decision on my part, both from a logistical and a developmental standpoint.
 
What I didn’t realize was that all those years of having my bucket filled would’ve allowed me to have a better idea of what I was passionate about.
 
That’s what I think education should be.
 
It should be an opportunity to find what is most important to you and develop the tools to make you the best you can be at whatever it is you love.
 
In order to do this you do have to test the waters of many a different subject that you will like or dislike to differing degrees.
 
Most of this seems to occur before you are truly capable of understand why it is important for you to try subjects even if you do not think you will like them.
 
I can say from my experience working in a non-traditional education environment that it is a constant struggle to get children to apply themselves to activities that aren’t of special interest to them, and these are elementary kids… this is before they get that teenage angst and sass.
 
There are few things I have found harder than getting a hyperactive fourth grader to slow down long enough to create a structure out of toothpicks and marshmallows. When you do, chances are that it’ll be a model of something that moves, like an airplane or car, because that is what they’d rather be doing.
 
At the same time though, if you can reach through and get someone to try something they don’t think they will like, you might just ignite their interest in a subject they never applied themselves to before.
 
If nothing else, you might open them up to trying new things they had previously written off or not considered. And isn’t that what Dr. Seuss was trying to illustrate with “Green Eggs and Ham”?
 
If you are open to the world around you and willing to try something that might make take you outside of your comfort zone, you could stand to benefit in ways that are not initially apparent.
 
You might just light a fire instead of filling a bucket.