Education has grown by a huge amount since it started. Schooling wasn’t always an option for everybody, and not everyone was lucky enough to be taught things that were important. I’m grateful that I’m capable of being in school during a time when it has been an open option for me. School nowadays is very flexible and understanding of us and our lives outside of school. The education department wasn’t always like this though, and was in fact very different for other generations. 

I think having an education is important and an extremely valuable thing, as not all people are given the same opportunities to have a well-educated life at such a young age. Having an education is such an important part of life and something that really helps us throughout the rest of our lives. Once we are fully out of school, things we learned will still be an important part of that. Like math, science, and English, almost everything we learn can help us in some way now and in the future. 

For my mother, schooling was a much different experience and part of her life than it is to me. She has a much different opinion on education than I do now. She explains how much of the schooling we go through isn’t useful, and how you could still have a good steady job without having to go through all of the years of education that we do. Darlene Moore, my mother said, “The idea of having an education meant that you paid more money for things that you would never get in return”.

For her, and how she grew up and experienced schooling, it wasn’t a big part of her life. For the age she’s at now, she’s accomplished a large amount even without the option of having a steady education throughout her younger years. Although she doesn’t agree with the way school is now, she does think that education has gotten better and in a way has improved with what they are teaching. For my mother, school was something that she desperately needed at her age. Having an education was the only way you could get somewhere back then. It was the only way people could accomplish many things in their life. Now, she thinks you could do just fine and beyond that even without an education.

Besides the actual education behind schooling, my mother was very good in school socially. Having and making friends was an easy thing for her, and it always has been. Mentally and emotionally it was different for my mother though, she struggled with education during her younger years of high school and didn’t get the option of having help. Moore commented, “One day, I walked up to my 9th grade teacher at the time and asked for help because of how badly I had been failing, and all that she said to me was that she couldn’t do anything and that even her as a teacher, didn’t believe in the way she had taught the students”. Something like this wouldn’t happen now that we have counselors, teachers, and even principals who would do as much as they could for us to understand school. This again shows how not every generation is lucky enough to have an education department willing to do a significant amount for you to succeed, and in this way, we are very lucky.

This is just one example of how much schooling has changed and how much of a different opinion you can have on certain things depending on your experiences. My mother didn’t have a good school experience leading her to believe that schooling was the most important thing we can have at our age. No matter what, school is something we all go through and all have to deal with for more than 10 years of our lives, hoping that one day it will matter and help us through life. Having the education department and people working for us to be successful is such an advantage and something we take for granted, yes there are some ways it could improve, but for the most part, having what we do is very important and will end up helping us out in the long run.