The Meaning of Education

It took me awhile to figure out how to post, everything is in Spanish and my knowledge of Spanish verbs is extremely rusty.
Because I haven’t been in class for the discussions this book has been a little bit more difficult for me to grasp. One thing that I did notice was the importance of education in the book. Education appears to mean different things and doesn’t necessarily mean formalized education. It seems to mark chapters in Adams’ life. The first chapter in his life seemed to be marked by the times he spent with this grandfather and the education that he received from him. That chapter in his life ended when his grandfather died. The Free Soil Party was the next major Influence on Henry’s education and helped to prepare him later in life. One thing I found that was interesting was the overall tone of Chapter3; I found it interesting that Adam’s felt that he hadn’t really been educated. I felt his thoughts may have been due to the end result of the snowball fight and the deal that the members of the Free Soil Party made to support a pro-slavery candidate. When Henry finally receives formalized education he rejects it and finds it intolerable. His descriptions of Harvard were hard for me to believe because we hold Harvard to such high standards now. It also seems as though the narrators standards are extremely high stating that what they completed in four years he could have done in one month. After finishing this chapter and reading that Henry still claimed not to know anything I realized that education stood for something more and that it didn’t necessarily mean “education” in the traditional sense but instead referred to life lessons which is also seen in the later chapters. After coming to that realization the beginning chapters made more sense, now I believe that when he was talking about Harvard he meant that it wasn’t preparing him for the real world.