Education, Pt. I

After grading my classes essays, and realizing that a lot of the sentence construction techniques and other formats that I taught them were not being used, I huffed and puffed to class the following session. I was enraged by the fact that after weeks of reviewing the same concepts and subject-matter that they just were not getting it.

That Thursday morning with a look of serious disdain on my face, and anger mixed with melancholy in my voice, I instructed them to write a sentence on their view or definition of "education".

At first, I got strange, curious looks as if asking: "What's Mr. Williams up to, now?" After the whisperings and musings died down, they got to work.

The session ended and I collected their paragraphs. That day, heading home on my bus, I took the paragraphs out of my messenger bag and started reading. Some gave dictionary definitions, others mentioned enlightenment and blah, blah, blah. There was one, however, which stood out. This particular student wrote the following:

"Education, to me, is the consumption of information to be used later in a sometimes different way than how it was consumed."

At the time, I did not understand why this particular definition stood out above the others, but after attending a book fair later that week, it was to become clear.

(to be continued)