Today education has an endless amount of definitions which are correct in certain aspects of society, but most leave out the one part of education that is truly vital. That is the concept of real life experiences. The debate of what to be educated really means has been going on for centuries, yet the answer isn’t esoteric at all! The scintillating Henry David Thoreau amazed scholars of his philosophy that one simply doesn’t just go to school to be educated, but one has to experience the world in order to be prepared for it. He lived in a small house on Walden Pond and lived off of the land. He quoted “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had …show more content…
Shorris teaches the humanities because it is something that everyone needs so that they can use these “gushing ideas, but also equip us to think and to argue”. Spayde uses Earl Shorris as a big name novelist that will help prove that there is something more that must be learned to be educated. Formal education doesn’t teach us everything in the real world, but the humanities help with this problem. After all, “The whole world’s a classroom, and to really make it one, the first thing to do is to believe it is”. Analyzing what Spayde is trying to say here is that people need to take into account the things that can’t be learned from formal education, plus that street smarts have the same value as formal education in my perspective. Education is a living, breathing thing which is combined by formal learning and learning from experience. These two types of learning are what it truly means to be “educated” according to Spayde. Formal education is something that everyone needs because of “global competitiveness”, but Spayde uses Earl Shorris to prove to his readers that an education in the humanities can go a long way and help living, at any income level, …show more content…
For example, in the text it says “An education is carpentered out of the best combination we can make of school, salon, reading, online exploration, walking the streets, hiking in the woods, museums, and friendship, may be the best education of all.” This statement helps Spayde with his argument because it is true. Spayde brings up this amazing view on education because something can be learned from all those examples. For example, through friendship, walking the streets, school, and museums, I gained some of the most valuable life lessons and experiences that have helped me in life. For example, my friends taught me how to change the oil on my car while going to museums expedites my education about past historical events. All of these types of learning are vital which is why a person needs to have a background in both formal and lived experiences “to be educated.” Education simply does not stop after high school but continues on in our everyday lives. A famous philosopher by the name of Martha Nassbuam quotes, “The very idea that we should have a list of great books would have horrified the ancients. If you take to heart what the classical philosophers had to say, you’ll never turn them into monuments”. From what I understand about this quote is that the “ancients” solely relied on firsthand experience, which is what they