Research and Writing- HW 46

Book: The End of Education by Neil Postman
Topic: College

The End of Education by Neil Postman is about the critique of American education and possible alternatives to education in the United States. Postman talks about some of the major aspects of education including, authority, media and views of knowledge and education, and why and how students can be motivated to go to school and learn.

This relates to my topic of college and how the expectation of education had changed over the years. College is becoming more and more of a requirement in the work force. This makes me wonder the real reasons students go to college. The reasons may have to do with authority figures in the student's lives such as parents and teachers. Specific to education, the teacher/faculty of school seem to be the main authority figures but in the lives of the students, the parents in addition to teachers play an authority figure role that affects the decisions the student makes. In addition, media and expectations from society affect whether a student decides to go to college or not. Since more and more people are going to college, it has become an expectation in society. Finally, the student themself, the motivation they have to continue learning in college.

Postman discusses the role of the authority and the "sin" of the student being too dependent on the authority figure. "The sin is in our unwillingness to examine our own beliefs, and in believing that our authorities cannot be wrong"(128). It seems tha often times in schooling (at least from my own experience), students expect the teachers to spoon feed the information to us, it is their job to give us all the information as the authority figures,"Knowledge is presented as a commodity to be acquired, never as a human struggle to understand, to overcome falsity, to stumble toward the truth."(116). It is the studnet's responsibility to take what the teacher says and think about it for themself instead of relying on the teacher to spell out the answers to everything. The student must prove they are thinking about the material. Students must think for themselves and make their own decisions but take the authority figures' information into consideration specifically when it comes to deciding whether or not to go to college after high school.

An important aspect of education, is the student's imput and motivation to learn.
"Neitzsche's famous aphorism is relevant here: 'He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.' This applies as much to learning as to living"(4). If the student has a good reason for them to educate themself, they will deal with many possible ways of doing so. If the student is motivated enough, they have the potential to learn in almost any situation.