Shah 1

Prit Shah
Ms. Thompson
AP Lang Block 2 Skinny A
May 18, 2015
Publish Ready
Education: For Obedience or Advancement
According to Bill Beatie, the aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think,
than what to think rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than
to load the memory with thoughts of other men. Baldwin, however, asserts that there is a
different purpose for education; education should be utilized in a way to develop a society in
which citizens simply obey the rules of society (Baldwin 42-44). How could society advance
when everyone obeys the rules? Society needs citizens that do not simply obey the rules in order
for society to truly advance.
Without the use of education to formulate questions about society and to make ones own
decisions, society leaves no room for improvement. Often times, Martin Luther King Jr. would
faithfully believe that the church and religious leaders of the South would follow a decree that
black people are the brother of citizens of society; however, the church was a bystander and
pretended to disregard that integration was something important to advocate. Because of this, he
questions the church and society by describing how they should be supporting racial justice and
that people built up animosity towards them for being a bystander (King 6). Subsequently,
integration could not have occurred unless King used his education to formulate his own
perspective on the world and create a distinct identity. How would society be now if King
complied with the rules of society?

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When a citizenry simply follows the rules of society, society leaves no room for proper
personal development. Innovation is impossible without students that make their own decisions
and create their own perspectives similarly to how MLK formulated his own perspective. Mike
Rose personally experienced how society left no room for proper personal development. As
stated by Mike Rose, The vocational track, however, is most often a place for those who are just
not making it, a dumping ground for the disaffected (2). Students along with Mike Rose in the
vocational education track followed the rules of the educational track set by society and they
solely developed into further mediocre students rather than developing into excelling students. It
is incontrovertible that students in the vocational track have potential to excel but are limited by
the identity implied on them in the vocational track by society.
With that thought in mind, it is also incontrovertible that not only does society leave no
room for proper development if all rules were simply followed, but also society leaves no
opportunity for creativity. Steve Jobs, a famous inventor, depicts how he became creative due to
being outside of the rules of society. Jobs studied at Reed College, a liberal arts school; however,
he famously dropped out and then hung around to study calligraphy (Serchuk, Steve Jobs
Liberal, Hippie Education). Instead of going through his years of college and getting a normal
job where he didnt learn to live with the questions of the universe, he followed his heart to
achieve an education on something he believed would truly benefit rather than impede his
creativity. Thus, he invented technologically advanced items such as the iPhone.
Rules being simply followed in society is not a plausible option, unless society does not
want to further advance. Famous characters such as MLK, Mike Rose, and Steve Jobs could not
have achieved such prodigious feats leaving people in a state of quandary as to how they
achieved it, without making their own decisions, formulating their own perspective on the world,

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and creating their own identities. How much advancement could society truly achieve if people
simply followed the rules?