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The Role of Education in My Life

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The Role of Education in My Life
Alex Isern Dr. Philip Friedman
HMXP 102 - Section 009
19 September 2011
Essay 1 – The role that education plays in my life
Education has been a key point in my life and it has opened me the doors to many different experiences. Thanks to education I have had the opportunity to choose what I wanted to do in my life and decide where I wanted to live. Education has given me more freedom to make decisions. Plato said that education should be mandatory for everyone because is the only way to develop a just society (The Republic). The author defended that education is the process that enables man to become aware of the existence of another reality (Allegory of the Cave). I agree with Plato that there is another reality. In my opinion there are many realities as there are many perspectives of the world. However, I think that knowledge is not enough to understand the other realities and it is needed the experience to realize that there are more things behind our reality. In my opinion, knowledge allows me to make my own decisions with freedom but I am able to understand the other realities through experience. Although philosophers insist that education is the process of learning different concepts and skills required to understand another reality, I will argue that experience has played a more important role in my education than the knowledge learned from others. In addition, I think that education’s role should be helping the people to choose freely rather than developing a just society.
In my opinion, education and freedom are two very correlated aspects. I don’t understand education without freedom and vice versa. If I don’t have the freedom to study what I want I will not be able to make my own decisions in the future. My academic background started in Spain where I graduated from high school and I started studying Business Administration in college. The education that I received from school and family allowed me to decide that I wanted to study in another place



Cited: Page Plato. The Allegory of the Cave. The Human Experience: Who Am I? Tapestry Press. 7th Edition. Plato. Apology. The Human Experience: Who Am I? Tapestry Press. 7th Edition. Plato. The Republic. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.html

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