Experience Education

Education provides the masses with the knowledge needed to succeed in life. Most people define education as the schooling found in public institutions. However, a majority of the population gains most of their knowledge not from schools, but from their surroundings. A person’s environment teaches the lessons firsthand, letting that person develop their own way of reacting and learning. This creates a personalized education that provides the individual with a chance to form their own opinion without any bias from an authority figure. Authoritative educators sometimes incorporate personal opinion into their teaching. Education in literature often originates from life experiences. In The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini illustrates how society’s teachings are harshly exposed to characters as they each meet the real world. On the other hand, in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, characters watch as society’s hypocrisy and double-standards unfold in front of their eyes. Although formal education from authority figures can impact characters, both novels demonstrate how real life experiences deliver richer lessons while formal education restricts the scope of learning for a character. However, while Khaled Hosseini uses direct and destructive experiences to educate the character, Harper Lee allows characters to be observers in their discoveries, resulting in unclouded judgment when the character learns from the situation.

Both authors develop the idea of real life experiences being more meaningful educational sources than what teachers teach at schools, with a formal education being a restriction for learning. For Scout, the miscommunication that occurs from the first day of school prevents proper education from taking place. When Scout ...

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...e idea that experiences are far more educational that formal education from authority figures. The miscommunication in Scout’s class, the narrow-mindedness of teachers in both novels, and the higher quality education the characters receive at home prove this. Hosseini uses direct and destructive experiences to teach the character whereas Lee uses observations as sources of learning. While Hosseini’s writings can be seen as more emotionally powerful, Lee’s writings are shown to provoke more authentic, meaningful responses from the reader. Both characters and the reader become educated and start to question the norms of society. This results in the discovery of a person’s own point of view and the establishment of their outlook on society. Through a combination of observation and direct experiences, a person often gains more knowledge than what they would in a school.