Education beyond the classroom

By Jennifer Lesnick

I am a student; my purpose at school is to learn. However, "learn" is such an abstract verb that I often lose sight of exactly where I am headed in my educational pursuit of knowledge. This is why I turn to books. I remind myself that I want to be worldly, cultured and intelligent. I am continuing my education at a prestigious university.

However, I still believe that education needs to go further. When I look around at my friends and fellow scholars, I see the venture for knowledge extremely lacking. Society does not seem to encourage students to continue their education outside of the classroom.

Few students engage in reading for pleasure anymore. Many amazing, classical pieces of literature go unread unless assigned by a teacher. These literary masterpieces contain some of the most important life lessons. They beg readers to open and dissect them. They provoke some of the most amazingly innovative criticisms of history and society.

How are new ideas ever going to be formulated when students lack the motivation to examine the ideas of the past? Turning to creative literature, poetry and history is how we discover ourselves.

Personally, I find myself at fault when it comes to this dreadful crime.

My passion seems to be ignited during my classes and immediately extinguished when I leave the classroom and enter into the real world.

All the promises that I made to myself about going to the library to pick up the works of Jane Austen or Virginia Woolf are left behind as I return to the numerous tasks that await me.

I could argue that time is the issue here, but I know that would be a terribly empty excuse. The answer lies much deeper. Reading a good book is losing its value for students. Reading for pleasure seems to be a rare occurrence when students have much more fun with other forms of media.

Now students are entering college without the ability to properly express their thoughts and opinions. This is a self-made handicap. Reading is something that takes time and practice. Good readers read all the time.

They enjoy the reading process and take time to absorb every morsel of the delicious combination of words that formulate a beautiful piece of art. Even better, they dissect what they read. They challenge the author's thoughts and learn from the wisdom of the past.

Reading is the very first step to enlightenment. Educate yourself -- you can never count on another person to do this for you. Pick up a good book. Challenge it. Use what you learn to express yourself in creative, articulate ways. Create your own world from what you learn.

Jennifer Lesnick is a freshman English major.