essay on education then and now on 200 words
Answers
It’s September again and most of the kids are going back to school, or going for the first time. But it isn’t like it used to be. Not by a long shot.
When I went to school from the late ‘40s thru the early ‘60s (I know. I’m dating myself.), the object was to learn. And learn we did. Instead of kindergarten and pre-kindergarten …which is now preceded by various forms of child care when the kid presumably learns to relate to his or her peers and be part of a group… we started school in the first grade.
If a child didn’t know how to read before he got to school, he started learning right away. Not just reading but spelling, the multiplication tables, arithmetic and how to tell time. They were even taught penmanship. You know, how to hold your pen or pencil and write clearly? How many people today do you know whose scrawl rivals that of doctors? And when it comes to the way they hold their pens….
As for learning to get along with their peers, that was a natural progression of teacher influence and playground interaction. It also didn’t hurt that most parents were exactly that. Parents. They taught their children to behave, have respect for authority and not talk back to their teachers.
Way back when, report cards were totally different from what they are today. First of all, you had to earn your grade. There was no such thing as social promotion. Even more shocking was that at least half the report card was devoted to…Shock! Amazement!.. something called Citizenship. You were actually graded on citizenship. Areas of concern included Courtesy, Cooperation, Obedience, Industry, Effort, Thrift, Dependability, Health, Neatness, Orderliness and Self-reliance.
If a child was frequently sick or severely underweight, it wasn’t reported to the Child Protective Service. The teacher or principal talked to the parents and/or accepted a note from the doctor and the word of the parent.
Good thing, too. I was the sickly kid in the crowd, due to major chest surgery when I was five. I was in school barely more than I was out and couldn’t gain weight if you handed me an anvil. Despite the fact I was blessed with good parents, CPS would’ve put me in protective custody and investigated my parents for child abuse. To give you an idea of just how scrawny, when I graduated from the 8th grade, I was 5’4” and weighed 78 pounds. Today I’m
6’1” and weigh about 189.
Being absent so much wasn’t a detriment to me. Thanks to my parents and, I suppose, a fairly decent level of intelligence, I had no problem keeping up with my classes. I was using a telephone and reading before I was three, knew the multiplication tables and how to tell time before starting school. I also had a full-blown set of adult encyclopedias that I used to satisfy my curiosity. It didn’t hurt that my mother, when I asked a question, didn’t say “go look it up.” Instead she said “Let’s go look it up.”
According to the teacher, I was reading on a 6th grade level when I started 1st grade, but the truth was that I could pretty well read anything you put in front of me by that time.
For practical purposes, I was partially home schooled before home schooling existed as an industry. Between that and an insatiable curiosity that drives self-education, I’ve wound up with an education substantially beyond the GED that I can claim on a formal level.
Education is very important for economic, mental and social development of a person .
People living in urban areas get education easily but hose living in rural doesn't . To improve the condition of education in rural areas government should do something .
If you don't want to learn
No one can teach you
And if you are determined to learn
No one can stop you