[issue 17]

[xbeiba]

"Formal education tends to restrain our minds and spirits rather than set them free."

 

Although formal education seems to primarilyinculcate people with ideology that has long been discovered and applied in our society and that accordingly makes people probably misconceive of something related to its still animation in current society. In contrary, they would think of the knowledge to be a restraint to minds and spirits for the long-applied attribute and slowly-changing character. But, that is right the merit of formal education, providing people with mature and widely-use science and art and other things, enough for people to be confident to make their choices since they already now how things and organizations work after learning and formal practicing, setting them free.

We might see being free as doing whatever we want to do at the moment no matter how it concerns the future and others. Albeit lounging or wandering around all the day without the burden of fulfilling obligations or fighting for tough things looks like concurring with the definition of free, it is not. Suppose one does not take formal education without commonsense and a goal to pursue. They must enjoy the carefree leisure but not for long, because they do not know how to comprehend the sophisticated schemes of the whole world and tend to get confused when they have to make decisions about their future. It turns out that people who fail to involve in formal education face dilemmas, thus feeling no free at all at last.

Therefore we need to take a look at how formal education set people free rather than restrain their minds and spirits. Formal education is not just an integration of science and art devoting to cover every aspects of our society, and responsibilities we have for people and their possessions as well, leading us to managing and administrating our actions with a necessary sense of what is good and bad. Once we get to know all these things, we start to look into the world in a completely new way in which we manage to navigate the future, be free to choose an appropriate pattern of life, and have the ability to do something useful to the society. In conclusion, formal education enable us to have a spirit and mind that is rational, more or less, to lead a life where we make our own decisions using what we have learned and knowing how it concerns with the society, and the most important, free.

People not willing to have formal education that they think is a restraint to their minds have not yet understood the best part of formal education, thus not been free. Looking through the situation throughout the world, we are able to find out the fact that the more college enrollment ratio, the more developed the country where people living in there have a better life with happiness. Moreover, not so developed but in a good momentum, some countries try to send its young generation to study abroad in countries that own fascinating education system, as they are getting more free through the better education. Meanwhile, some other countries, however, are not in a satisfying condition where people feel suppressed and restricted severely out of the fact that they cannot have access to much formal education for such reasons as autocracies or poverty, sometimes connected with the former.

Indeed, formal education benefits generation by generation since its beginning, when people used to believe in sorcery or perhaps are ruled by formidable monarchy or church that restrict thoughts and free spirits. Since then, things are getting better as people get access to formal education, letting them to know such a beautiful world is out there waiting them to do something new about it. In terms of the present situation that formal education is more convincing to make contributions to setting people's minds and spirits free, around the world is sprawling the calling for a greater investment in formal education all over the world.