Introduction
The idea of freedom and
equality for all is an aspiration, a goal. To achieve a goal, someone
should keep learning different new things. Therefore, learning in general is
like a passion to him and education is the best way to achieve his goal, but
education outcomes was measure by family, school and society, they are links in
a chain,
Into the Wild is a 1996
non-fiction book written by Jon Krakauer. It is a book about a young
man named Chris McCandless gave his education and went into Alaska wildness. Some
reader admired the boy because he did what most people want to do but
never had the brave to do it, and his passion for living by his
principals, for simplicity and purity, is attractive and admirable. But if
he is not from a rich family, he didn’t get good education and read so many
books, would he still be interested in the wildness? It’s hard to say. Others
fulminated he was an idiot and self-fish because he brought so much pain for
his family who loved him, but the reason he “escaped” from his family and left
for Alaska wildness was from the contradictions in the relationships between he
and his parents. He once complained to his sister Carine that his parent wanted
to buy him respect, he couldn’t pardon the mistakes his father once made, and
he never confronted his parents what he knew instead of making a secret of his
dark knowledge. When the conflicts came to surface, he left for his adventure,
during his two-year adventure, his intelligence and knowledge made a deep
impression for his acquaintances, at the same time, he learned a lot from his
experiences, and finally he wrote down “HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED”. He
found his true self and his identity, but unfortunately he stayed in the old
bus 142 in Alaska wildness forever. I like this book because Krakuaer’s
attitude to Chris is neutral, he left it to the reader to form his or her own
opinion of Chris McCandless. I personally praise the spirit of Chris’s
following dream. In addition, it reminds me of the importance of passion and
education in one’s life.
Three Sources of Growth
and Development
Education play a vital
role in one’s growth and development, and the growth and development of an
individual depends on the individual's impacting life experiences which comes
from three main sources: the individual's family, school and social environment.
These three sources are connected like links on a chain. If any one of these
links is missing, then the integrity of the entire chain is disrupted.
Thus, the growth and development of the individual is disrupted. So for
one to grow and develop properly, each of these three links/sources needs to be
present.
Family education is the
foundation of one’s development
Personal family experiences has the most impact on one’s development and the
specific amount of familial impact depends on the amount of familial
involvement. Family involvement can help with kid’s school success, while
without family involvement, it’s hard for a kid to be success. “The most adequate predictor of
student success in school is not family income or social status but the extent
to which a student's family is involved.” ~Henderson and Berta, A New Wave of
Evidence. Family is
most definitely the root of one's self development since family is one's
earliest source of self-identification and understanding of priorities and morality.
Thus, if one is lacking family presence, whether it be physical or emotional,
then his/hers development and fundamental understanding of self and what's
right and wrong is compromised.
Generally, early
on, children worship their parents, because they view parents as their
authorities. They view their parents as the ones who "knows what's
best," their teachers and protectors. So ultimately parents are the
ones who embed in their child's minds what's fundamentally right/wrong.
However, this doesn't mean that the child will not learn and development
independently from their parents. “He brooded at length over what he
perceived to be his father’s shortcoming, the hypocrisy of his parent’s
lifestyle, the tyranny of their conditional love.”(64) This shows that parent’s behavior
highly impacts a child’s morality in life. Chris thought his father put
such value on honesty and integrity for him, he had lost respect for his
father. From the book Into the Wild, the reader can know Chris isolated
himself from his family because he dislike both the materialism lifestyle of
his parents and his father's double and duplicitous life. “…Chris would fixate on his father’s
own…denounce as a sanctimonious hypocrite.”(122) Chris held a deep contempt for his
father as he learned the particulars of Walt's divorce from his first wife,
which involved an affair between them while dating Chris's mother. And after
graduated from college, he rebelled and left his family without saying goodbye.
That is, the words and the deeds from parents make a great impact on kids, for
parents, it’s necessary to realize this and set up a good role model.
Children unconditionally love and look up to their parents. Many kids
even view their parents as their most reliable and best friends. Thus,
of course parents highly impact their children’s development and success!
However, if the parents have a lot of conflicting views on morality and quarrel
frequently, the children may grow up feeling lost and confused about what's
right and wrong which in turn cause their personality and behavior to gradually
turn to odd. “…as Chris’s
resentment of his parents hardened, his sense of outrage over injustice in the
world at a large grew.”(123) this
quote shows that Chris was unsatisfied with what his parents’ effect on the
society. Family is the living haven of a child, it plays a decisive role
in the formation of child's personality and habits. The closeness between
parents determines the extent of a family harmony. In harmonious
families, the parents have a harmonious relationship and their children grows
well. Conversely, it is difficult for a child to grow well in a family
which is full of gunpowder. “In
the moments of anger, one or the other often threatened divorces.” “…we learned
to count on each other when Mom and Dad weren’t getting along.”(107) Apparently, the unharmonious
relationship between parents hurt Chris and his siblings badly. So in
order to protect child, parents should not quarrel in front of their
children. If you have a conflict, you should try to compromise or handle
it in a way that minimally impacts the kids.
Communication also play an important role in a family education, parents should
spend more time with child and try to find out what they are interested in and
help them to achieve their goals, instead of overprotecting or
over-authorizing. To try to provide a better life for their children, Chris’s
parents spent a majority of their time working and little time with their
children when they were young. To a certain extent, they neglect
communicating with their child causing their children to not know how to
communicate with them. Chris ever told Carine that his parents made his “entire
childhood seem like a fiction”. But he never confronted his parents about his
feelings, “He chose instead to
make a secret of his dark knowledge and express his rage obliquely, in silence
and sullen withdrawal.”(123) Also,
Walt McCandless want to influence and parent Chris, but Chris craved
independence and detests authority especially arbitrary authority, “Chris just didn’t like being told
what to do. I think he would have been unhappy with any parents; he had trouble
with the whole idea of parents.”(115) without proper communication,
conflicts between son and parents make a deep influence in kid’s growth. It’s
clear that communication among families is necessary for a kid’s education,
family education play a decisive role in a child's growth.
School education is a key
stage of education.
In almost all societies, receiving scholastic education is vital and necessary
if one wants to achieve "success". School education prepares you for
a higher level of education. It is a launching pad for one’s goals and
actions for his future. School education provides you with more opportunities
not matter what your age, homeland, class, race or religion. I totally
agree with what Bellie McCandless said “if
you want to make a difference in the world… Go to college, get a law degree,
and then you’ll be able to have a real impact.”(114) Different people have different
passions. If you want to make a difference, you need to find your niche.
Education helps you understand yourself better. It helps you realize your
strengths and weakness, your potential and qualities as a human being. A person
should follow their passion. Getting an education to fulfill oneself
should be the first step to success. Scholastic education is the most
beneficial and the fastest progress education. Not all dreams can be
turned into reality. However, one must always at least attempt to realize
them. “But [Everett] and
McCandless, at least they tried to follow their dream. That’s what was great
about them. They tried. Not many do.” (96) This shows that people
admire those who work hard to try to follow their dreams. I think people
should try to find their value in life through school even if it fails. My
passion is education and learn about other culture, other ideas and other
people. I, just like many immigrants, go to college to try to learn English,
professional skills and about the American culture. We try to learn these
things to increase our opportunities in this country.
You should obtain academic education from school because it
will bring you many opportunities in life. One can receive academic
education from parents also, but parents have limited academic knowledge.
Thus, kids need professional academic educators such as school teachers. They
can act as secondary guides (parents being the primary guides) to a child's
success. In his speech “Growing roses in Concrete”, Jeff Duncan-Andrade
ever said “…to add some additional resources down into concrete through
the cracks…we’ve been able to grow more roses than before”, it suggests
that if our educators show more compassion and love to students, and let them
know we need them and love them, it would inspire them to make progress so
that they can confidently walk the pathway to success. But we should realize
that, to help students find and follow their passion, the teachers themselves
should have passion because “one
person’s passion can flourish into and become other people’s passions.” School education requires passion,
without passion, there is nothing exciting in a classroom, while with passion,
students’ emotion will be affected and teaching activities can be vivid, thus
enhance the effectiveness of teaching and learning.
Secondly, schools have a grading system which helps children figure out their
strengths and weaknesses. Schools teach kids a variety of subjects such as
astronomy, geography and natural science. Many schools also teaches kids
extracurricular skills (e.g., how to play an instrument, sports, art, etc.) and
discipline. Ultimately, schools help mold kids into skillful citizens who
can contribute to the society. Just as Andrade once said “…when roses come back to the
concrete, they create rose garden”. Children
are the future of ours, we are not only going to grow a rose, we should create
a beautiful garden, and the resources in a school is like water, sun and rich
soil.
Thirdly, schools provides a positive atmosphere. As we know, a kid can learn
different others consciously or unconsciously by comparing his/herself with
others. No one likes to be a loser, and school can make someone feel more
confident in life just as what Chris once said“...how important it is in life
not necessarily to be strong, but to feel strong”. With confidence and passion in
mind, kids will not hesitate to try best to make him perfect, then they can
follow their dreams, they can succeed in the future. School education is very
important, everyone should go to school and learn.
Social education is the
extension of family education and school education.
Social education is the collection of education from the society which includes
knowledge, experience, skills and communication. Students can benefit a lot
from society that can't be taught by books. George Santayana ever said “A child educated only at school is an
uneducated child.” That is,
learning subjects in school is not enough, one can learn how to live life by
knowing what to say when acting a certain way in certain situations, so he also
needs to go into the society to learn more. According to the book Into the
Wild, Chris graduated from college with honors, but eventually he found that “HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED”
(189) through his two-year
adventure. It is clear that Chris was able to learn a lot from his friends as
he travelled around, he met many friends, he helped people and people helped
him, and he learned to love and he did. He was succeed in persuading an 80-year
old man climbing up to the top of hill and the man was so happy what he did.
And then he can realize “The joy
of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no
greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a
new and different sun.”(57) It
shows that people can learn a lot from social experience which make their life
vivid and more beautiful. As mentioned previously, students can benefit a lot
from society that can't be taught by books, the knowledge and experience from
social environment can promote one’s growth and development, and he can be more
perfect.
But social education is widespread, it affects students’ thinking for both
multifaceted and lifelong. All phenomenon in our society will affect
students in different extend, if the kids have high analysis abilities, they
will never see things black and white. But if they can’t, negative social
phenomenon such as domestic emotional crisis, the market economy infection,
safety integrity, adverse cultural factors and so on, may pose hazards to kids.
One of Chris friends said “Sometimes
he tried too hard to make sense of the world, to figure out why people were bad
to each other so often.”(18) This presents Chris was confused by the
abnormal phenomenal in the world instead the beautiful side of society, he
can’t understand the inequality among people, therefore, he tried to go to
wildness and find solution. In the similar situations, if we should actively guide
kids to give feedback to different social information, they can enhance their
capabilities of analysis and resilience in the midst and constantly social
environment instead of going to the extreme.
.
The development of a person is dependent on the lessons learned from a
combination of education gained from their family, school and society.
Generally, family can have a positive influence on how well their children do
in school, the longer families involved in their children’s education, the more
likely their children will be successful in school; and society too have a
positive impact on school effectiveness. In order to meet the need of modern
science and technology, but also to fully develop one's intelligence and
potential, one not only needs education at school, moreover, should go deep
into the large social classroom, experience different social roles, learn
social norms, expand social interaction and develop modern qualities. If one’s
family, school and society work together, then one’s growth is maximized.
As mentioned previously, these three sources are connected like links on a
chain. If any one of these links is missing, then the integrity of the entire
chain is disrupted. This quote expresses this concept “Reading to
a child in the preschool years has a ripple effect that positively
impacts the child, the family, the schools and society as a whole through
increased economic development, reduced special education, and reduced criminal
justice cost.” ~Closing the Achievement Gap in American Business. A child doesn’t only learn from their
school, he also learns from their family and social environment.
Therefore, we should realize the importance of three sources of one’s
growth, we should correctly handle the relationships between them. School
should work for community, and community should participate in education.
Overall, we must realize the importance of education because it is essential to
one’s development. Generally, children’s education begins at home, they
learn and obtain formal education at school, and they also acquire knowledge
from even an acquaintance. That is to say, a child's development is affected by
education from home, school and community. If any ones of these component
of education is ignored, adverse consequences would result. If we want a child
to have comprehensive and healthy development, we must establish the overall
concept of education and make sure the integration of school, family and
society.
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