Education Part 3

What happens once we finish school, leave the compulsory education or graduate from any formal institution? Where do we go from there?

I think for most people it really does end there. I think for most people the workaday life begins. With that life comes the bills, the television, the routine. I don't have any real judgments one way or the other with this. It's true that most people just go through their days to collect a paycheck only to dole it back out to all the goods and services we are led to believe that we need. And on the weekends there is football on television.

I wish it wasn't like this for so many people. With all of the data given to us on a daily basis, there is so much of it that we can easily transform into worthwhile experiences and points of learning. The Internet for all of its pitfalls has more educational opportunities available at a few keystrokes than the world has ever known before. There is everything from short video tutorials to very elaborate and formally recognized courses of study. You can learn anything very quickly from the shorter how-to articles and the video tutorials. What's even greater about that is that these articles and videos are made by normal people for normal people and provided for free. With it, I feel like there is the capability to accomplish a task or create something quickly with the help of people who you will never know, never meet, never see in the flesh. What a way to share knowledge.

But Wiki-articles and Youtube tutorials are not the only way to learn something, and too often anymore, I feel like we lean on these things a great deal more than we should. Whereas I praise these sorts of learning opportunities, I also see the negative side of these too. There is the obvious reason, they are flawed because what may have worked for the person writing the article or making the video may not work for you. Keep in mind the person on the other end of the tutorial probably has more experience, and with the experience, there is some sort of formal education not to mention the defeats and triumphs that go along with putting into practice what one has learned.

The smaller group sharing activities are all around us, everywhere and everyday. After all, any shop keeper who has a product to sell, from cheese making supplies to fabric stores will offer classes for a negligible cost or for free to anyone interested. This way they can sell any student all sorts of supplies or tools. Almost all communities have libraries, recreation centers and civic organizations that offer classes on all sorts of subjects from upholstery to bee keeping. In my town, I could, conceivably book up all of my time from the moment I wake up to the time I go to bed, seven days a week, with classes. All I need to do, like what any of us need to do, is to go out and just do it.

These sorts of enrichment classes may not have a formal piece of paper included at the conclusion. These classes will probably not make a person earn more money or receive more prestige. But there is something far more valuable. These sorts of classes enrich a mind, feed a soul. Then there are the people involved in these things that you would not have had the opportunity to meet otherwise.

When you're a writer, and it always goes back to that for me, seeking out these classes in the community are invaluable. The experience itself is great, and any knowledge gained will certainly enhance life. But as a writer, you gain the knowledge that you can give to a character. You can find more conflicts in a bigger understanding of the world. Being able to write about what you have learned will also make you a bigger expert in that field as well as enhancing your life as a writer.

Over the years as an editor of a small literary magazine, I couldn't always tell the education level of a writer, but I could almost always tell the age or experience level. For instance, many writers who I published wrote about interesting characters doing interesting things. Their characters, much like the writers themselves I suspect, had had some sort of experience doing something: botany, nursing, bricklaying, etc. The flip side of that, there have been countless stories written about writers who have some sort of writer's block or other. I have read dozens, hundreds maybe, of short stories about the creative writing workshop at college. Boring. My advice to young writers who write about the creative writing workshop? Write the exact same story, but instead of creative writing workshop, write about the candle making workshop. Whereas making candles may not seem interesting, it is unusual and you'd have to enroll in a class like this to understand it.

Those smaller courses that abound all over the place cannot do any harm, not one single lick of harm to a person. It will only give a student the ability to do something new, give a greater understanding of that subject and the introductions to other people.