What does it mean to be well educated?

I feel that this is a question that is honestly un-answerable. Alphie Kohn did his best to answer this question in his book entitled "What does it mean to be well educated?" This compilation of essays gives us his perspective and brings up some key points about the flaws in today's education. I feel that our education system is flawed as well as there is more importance for other aspects of education than there is for students receiving a quality learning experience.

I feel that some schools put too much emphasis on extra-curricular activities and not enough on education. I know of schools that win state championships every year in what seems like damn near every sport. However, their state test scores are significantly lower than the smaller schools who do not do as well in these same extra curricular activities. These same schools will hire and pay a coach to win them a state title at all costs, whether that means sacrificing meaninful study and homework time to fit in a 4 hour long practice. This then leads to the common perception of a "dumb athlete." Dont get me wrong, I want to coach someday and have played sports my whole life. However, we were never very good because my coachs always kept practice to a reasonable time limit in hopes of not stripping us of a quality education. Without this extra time, I wouldnt of been able to achieve the grades I did in order to go to college and try to receive a better more "quality" education.

Another reason that schools are stripping us of our quality educations is that fact that they have teachers who do not teach because they have tenure. In Kohn's book, it brings up the debate of tenure. I feel that it could possibly be a good thing, yet in order to achieve it, a teacher must be evaluated on a regular basis in order to make sure they are still doing their jobs. This is the main problem with tenure. In some schools that offer tenure, a teacher will work really hard for the amount of years it takes to achieve tenure, and then they will sort of "coast" through the rest of the years because they feel they are safe from being fired. This is morally wrong as the only one who suffers out of the whole ordeal is the students. They are not being prepared for further education and slowly start to slip behind other students of their same age group. This could possibly be the reason that we are slipping behind other countries in our schooling.

I could bring up many more points about this matter, but those two are the main reasons that I feel are why we cannot receive a "quality" education. In our society today, people are selfish and only think about them. Whether its a school district that does not care about education as much as they do some shiny trophy in a case somewhere, or a teacher who simply quits teaching because they have achieved tenure, we, as well as our future generations, will never receive a quality education again unless there is an effort to change issues like these and concentrate more on fixing our education system.