Building Blocks

A universal understanding of education can be summed up in this: Education is expected to enlighten the younger generations in order to send them off into the future in hopes that they become successful pupils and help to advance society. There are three fundamental parts that contribute to a successful education; diligence, motivation and the value of culture of the classroom, and civil discourse. Despite being such a developed country with one of the strongest economies in the world, the United States ranked as the fourteenth best educational system, behind a long list of European and Asian countries, according to an MBC Times article released on February 9th, 2016. People listen from around the world to Americans gloat over their
First, one must learn diligence, if both teacher and student put in the hard work to further develop oneself, society will find more valuable improvements in education. This building block, representing working hard, was perfectly captured in Sherman Alexie’s essay, “Superman and Me”. In his essay, Alexie reveals his remarkable experience with education as an Indian living on a reservation, where he taught himself to read and persevered through adversity even when his own teachers oppressed him in the classroom and expected him to fail. Similarly to being labeled a “below average” student at my old school, Alexie explains, “We were Indian children who were expected to be stupid” (Alexia 17). Alexie recognized this belief at an early age, but could not bring himself to accept it. He worked as hard as he possibly could to learn how to read, he read just about everything he saw with words. He realized his purpose was more than just proving himself to be better than his label, but to also help the other Indian kids who have lost all motivation to work hard to learn, “I am smart. I am arrogant, I am lucky. I am trying to save our lives” (Alexie