We often talk about education being a path to new jobs and better opportunities. That is certainly true. Every ethnic group has risen from poverty through education.
Another aspect of higher education is even more important. Education changes our entire perspective and makes us thirst for more knowledge. People have wondered why staff get more scholarship money than the instructors. My guess is that faculty would pack classes. They know how to learn. They know what additional credits will do for them. They enjoy learning.
Teaching has given me an insatiable drive to read. I always read before I began teaching. I will concede that. But being given a new subject to teach creates a desire to know that topic better than the students. I knew a little about Islam. Suddenly I was supposed to teach 14 centuries of Muslim history in one week. Books I would never have opened became a great source of interest to me. I swapped some of my old favorites for a copy of the Cambridge History of Islam. I read a three-volume history of the Byzantine Empire – several times. The Byzantine Empire fought the Muslim armies until it was defeated. I read Gibbons Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which led up to the Muslim era.
Critical thinking class made me dust off my logic textbooks. Logical arguments from Greece and Rome related to the ancient history I studied for teaching about Islam. Now I teach critical thinking fairly often through Axia. The mental tools cannot grow rusty when they are used so often.
Earning a degree in adult education was a practical move for me. I could see the expansion of online education and enrolled in that program. Learning adult education theory was like learning how an auto works. I can drive without knowing how a car functions, but it is more interesting with some background knowledge.
Journalism was another pragmatic move for me, since I wanted to teach more writing courses at a higher level. All I wanted to do was earn the credits to teach more. I was surprised to find a new world of literature opening up to me, even though I have read literature since high school.
Most students are aware of the rules about healthy food, whether those rules are followed or not. Studying something just to know more about it is another kind of nutrition, feeding the brain and the soul. America was founded by intellectuals like Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, George Washington, and Thomas Paine. Yes, one essay by Paine kept America in the war and gave us independence. The essay was a best-seller starting with eight one-syllable words: “These are the times that try men’s souls.”
Higher education always bears fruit. No one should ever doubt that opportunities arise from advanced preparation. More importantly, higher education has value by itself, as it lifts mankind from barbarism.
“Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.” ~G.K. Chesterton (Quotegarden)
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