http://bruessard.com - Education for All

Listen to this article

EDUCATION FOR ALL

THE CYCLE OF LIFE

The typical stages in the cycle of life on Earth go something like this: At the microscopic/household/family level, you are born into the world. You grow. You go to school and get an education. You find a mate, conceive, and reproduce. You get a job and earn money to provide for your offsprings until they are old enough to provide for themselves. Besides working most of your adult life to provide food, clothing, and shelter for the family unit, you engage in hobbies and other kinds of recreational, self-improvement, and spiritual-enrichment pursuits. You also aspire to maintain some measure of physical and psychological security, material comfort, health, freedom, and happiness. Next, you become elderly. Finally, you die.

The cycle of life applies to all living things on Earth, that is, a cycle of birth, growth, survival, reproduction, and death. After humans die, some argue that an afterlife or reincarnation awaits them. Others argue that death marks the end of the journey, period, or death means a return to dust with no afterlife or reincarnation to follow.

At the macroscopic/societal/country level, as humans move through the cycle of life, they also must confront and contend with the following:

a host of biological challenges (namely, the interrelationship of humans to the elements of water, air, and earth; the interrelationship of humans to Mother Nature's finite natural resources; and the interrelationship of humans to all other life forms on Earth).
a host of sociological challenges (namely, the interrelationship of humans to one another given the cultural, social, religious, language, ideological, and racial differences that divide them).
a host of international challenges (namely, the occasional nationalistic pride and geopolitical ambitions of certain national leaders to conquer territory and wage war even if it requires using all kinds of conventional, nuclear, biological and chemical weapons). These weapons are capable of being delivered anyplace on Earth by air, water, land, and space.

Even among the smartest humans, at the international level, there is much debate but seldom consensus about how best to address these biological, sociological, and international challenges. The failure to reach consensus gives rise to a feeling of perpetual global paralysis, impasse, or stalemate. Similarly, at the national level, lay persons, pundits, scholars, experts, philosophers, academicians, politicians, theologians, and so forth, are incessantly at odds about how best to organize the resources of society such that citizens realize fulfilling lives as they move through the cycle of life.

THE IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION IN THE CYCLE OF LIFE

Education plays two crucial roles in the human life cycle. The first crucial role (and challenge) of education is this:

To provide students with the knowledge and skills that they require to become productive and self-supporting members of society regardless of the career niche they choose, that is, whether an academic, athletic, artistic, or vocational niche.

The second crucial role (and challenge) of education is this:

To teach students how to be responsible and law-abiding members of civil society. Responsible conduct entails leading principled and disciplined lives. It also entails showing the utmost respect for self, respect for others, respect for the property of others, respect for the rule of law, and respect for human life regardless of race, color, creed, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, disability, national origin, socioeconomic birth status, political ideology, and so forth.

It generally is believed that a highly educated population would be more inclined to conform to responsible, caring, law-abiding, self-supporting, and productive kinds of behavioral modes and activities. It is believed that a highly educated population would be less inclined to engage in counterproductive activities such as crime, fighting, killing, pillaging, destroying, cheating, deception, spying, stealing, corruption, extortion, intimidation, torture, and so forth. In addition to a nexus between at-risk factors for engaging in counterproductive activities and educational achievement, some argue that counterproductive activities also are attributable to a host of other factors such as a lack of employment opportunities, mental illness, substance abuse, addictions, a culture of social deviance, and so forth. The book (The Age of Homo Sapiens Sapiens) probes these various arguments about why humans behave the way that they do.

Click Here for a Snapshot View of World Education and Literacy as of 2007 Only

The following website offers graphical views of world education and literacy:

http://www.uis.unesco.org/literacy/Pages/adult-youth-literacy-data-viz.aspx

The following websites are excellent resources to boost [adult] literacy around the world and within the USA:

Click This Link to Search UNESCO's Databases

THE INTERNET AS AN EDUCATIONAL TOOL

Come now the Internet. The power of the Internet rests with the fact that it holds the potential to empower all humans. The Internet theoretically has given everyone on Earth a voice. All that one needs to do is post or upload a blog, website, guestbook, message board, social site, and so forth, to the Internet in order to tell his or her story to the world. The Internet also has the potential of becoming one colossal educational tool and can be likened to a tree of knowledge. Equally, the Internet has the potential of becoming one colossal tool of decadence as exemplified by the numerous explicit, malicious, and scam websites on the World Wide Web.

There are numerous educational resources on the Internet. Websites such as the following ones provide free educational instructions to anyone on Earth notwithstanding the language barrier:

Watch (Free Online Education: Top 10 Sites)

Tutorial Resources - Marcus P. Zillman

According to Miniwatts Marketing Group's InternetWorldStats.com website, as of 2011, on average, 32.7% of the world's population used the Internet. When reviewing Internet users by country, it becomes apparent that students in many of the world's countries are not equipped to take advantage of the educational opportunities being offered by websites such as the above-cited ones. For instance, InternetWorldStats.com's 2011 review of Internet users indicates that, of the world's 2 billion Internet users, only 3.4% of those 2 billion users reside in the Middle East region.

ONLINE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES

Websites such as the following ones offer an array of global educational resources:

RESOURCES FOR HIGHER EDUCATION

Websites such as the following ones explore global (and USA) opportunities for higher education:

HUMAN TRIUMPH OVER ADVERSITY ON EARTH

The S.O.S. Band's "It's A Long Way To The Top" and "Do It Now" plus Barry White's "Change," Earth, Wind & Fire's "Faces," and Vangelis's "Aries" reflect the triumph of humanity over adversity on Earth.

If the peoples of the Earth genuinely united and chose Heaven (life, prosperity, and peace) over Hell (death, destruction, and extinction), then such a milestone would represent a feat worthy of all kinds of "Good Times" as personified by "Soulful Strut," "Dervish D," "Ibiza," "C'Mon," "House Music," "Flight Of The Bumblebee," "Pavane," "Golden Time Of Day," "Southern Sunset," "The Planet Of Love," "Space Opera" and countless other celebratory songs.

The journey truly begins with the "Man In The Mirror," "Conversation Peace," and "This House". For, when humans genuinely embrace world peace, perhaps finally they will get around to finding "A Time To Love" one another and a time to treasure all life on Earth.

REBUILD THE WORLD

Watch (Grand Challenges for Engineering)

Jeff Wayne featuring Richard Burton and Justin Hayward - "Forever Autumn"

Stevie Wonder - "Feeding Off The Love Of The Land"

Stevie Wonder - "The First Garden"

FLATTER THIS SITE:

SEARCH THIS SITE:

Intellectual Property Disclosures: All videos and songs (as well as many of the images) referenced or spotlighted throughout this website are the legal and intellectual properties of others. All content and opinions on this website (bruessard.com) are those of the author (Edward Bruessard) exclusively and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the contributors, creators, owners, and distributors of these referenced videos, songs, and images. The author holds no legal interest or financial stake in any of these referenced videos, songs, and images. The contributors, creators, owners, and distributors of these referenced videos, songs, and images played no role at all regarding the appearance of said videos, songs, and images throughout this website; they had no clue that this website would be spotlighting their works.