Anything You Can Do…

While I’m playing with semantics, I might as well explain what I see to be the difference between education and academic achievement. At the most basic level I understand the former to be a cooperative venture while the latter is competitive in nature. The distinction has become so blurred in our American society that the two are regarded as synonymous, much the same way that religion and faith are (erroneously) used interchangeably. A childhood example might serve to illustrate. My mother taught (educated) me to tie my shoelaces. Without the pressure of competition she patiently instructed me in the intricate moves that I still employ today. If this lesson, however, was transposed into an academic setting it would surely become a competitive matter of determining who can tie their shoelaces the best and fastest. The “winner” would go to the head of the class while the rest of us would be clumped together as average and normal. In such a scenario the basic lesson learned becomes secondary to the successful achievement of outstanding performance which distinguishes the superior from the inferior. I mistakenly set out for college thinking that I was going to further my education, when the truth of the matter was that I was entering the academic arena to scholastically prove myself worthy of the calling I had sensed my entire life.