Being an educated person in America continues to become increasingly more important. It is the most important thing for our lives and future, in my opinion. According to the Harvard Graduate School of Education, to be considered educated, “students should leave school with a deep understanding of who they are and how they fit into the world, and have learned what some call ‘soft skills’ (complex problem-solving, creativity, entrepreneurship, the ability to manage themselves, and the ability to be lifelong learners)”. Unfortunately, everyone in America cannot receive the education they need or want. This leads us to divide American people into two groups: educated and uneducated. We can further evaluate them in the terms of economical power, social status and mentality. When we talking about educated and uneducated people, we tend to link it together with money and business. It is true that educated people have a lot more opportunities in the business word than uneducated people. According to the Business Insider, the unemployment rate for those with less than a high-school diploma is 14.2%; whereas the unemployment rate for those with a college degree is much lower at 4.2%. Educated people primarily have a certificate of some sort to verifying their state of formal education, and this is what counts most of the time to employers. Consequently, as they have more opportunities to have a good job, they are able to earn a better income. The average earnings for a person with an associate’s degree are $36,684 annually with the opportunity to earn an average of $63,936 annually for holding a graduate degree. In contrast, uneducated people, whose annual average income is only $21,648, do not have much chance of having a good, well-paying job unless they are very lucky. Roughly 85% of current open jobs and 90% of new jobs require some or more college. They usually have to work in simple temporary jobs or have to do very heavy muscle work in a construction or field. So unlike educated people, they find it hard to have enough income to make ends meet to support their families causing them to look toward the government for help and support. An astounding 35 million Americans subsists on food stamps.
The issue of income brings us to another aspect of this debate, which is the social status of these people. When you have money, you seem to be respectable in the eyes of other people. But if you do not have money, you do not have much of a specialty, apart from being poor. Statistics show that people who graduate college with a degree will generally do better than their peers in life as a whole, while those to who do not graduate or drop out of school seems to live much harder more difficult lives. Most uneducated Americans do not choose to be in that condition; however, but because they are not educated properly or at all, they are not as lucky as the educated ones to have the same chances in life. Sadly, only 69% of American students graduate high school with a diploma, and 6 million high schoolers in the bottom 25% of their class are 20 times more likely to drop out all together. One reason why educated people have a superior status in society is that their actions in life are according to their knowledge of things. For example, educated people are able to be functionally literate, think critically, and balance a checkbook. Of course, it would not be a false statement if we say that sometimes the uneducated beats the educated in terms of being social or respectable but this is not our actual case. One example of this would be a person who becomes an entrapenuer of a successful business without attending college or earning a degree. Uneducated people who are unable to obtain a labor job often result to crime, drugs, alcohol, welfare, homelessness, or worse leading to their subpar status within society. On a national scale, shoplifters hoist $35 million a day in goods from retails stores. The last aspect we are going to discuss is their mentality. We have the impression that educated people are open-minded whereas uneducated people are closed-minded. And guess what? This is generally the truth. Educated people have an advantage of greater knowledge about the world, other people, possibilities or excessities because they are educated not only technically or scientifically but also culturally. This is one reason for the development of general education requirements for high schools and colleges. Educated people have a chance to see the world through other people’s eyes due to the education they received. Yet uneducated people are mostly straightforward thinkers because they have only what they have seen and learned from their parents along with what they have experienced in life.
This is partially due to the fact that nearly 85% of juveniles are functionally illiterate. The most upsetting part about this is that they treat their children with this mentality starting the cycle all over again. Statistics show that teenage girls age 16 to 19 who live below or at poverty level and have below average literacy level are 6 times more likely to have children out of wedlock than girls able to read proficiently. Seeing that the information they have gathered so far is enough and almost more than enough for them, they think that their children may do the same as they did. It is completely fair for some uneducated people to do this injustice to their children. 1 in 4 American children grow up not knowing how to read. However educated people want their children to go far beyond them. They want them to make better than what they did. Because they know that every day and every second of our lives some things change and develop and some things are discovered or invented. As discussed there are some aspects according to which educated and uneducated people can be compared and contrasted. I do not want to put any blame on uneducated people blind-foldedly before figuring out their reasons but this is the case in some parts in the world. All of these discussions remind us the importance of this one and only thing: education.
Works Cited
Anderson, Jill. “Defining the Educated Person.” 26 April 2012. Harvard Graduate School of Education. 29 October 2013 . Denning, Steve. “What Does It Mean To Be Educated?” 31 July 2011. Forbes. 29 October 2013 . Do Something. “11 Facts Abour Education in America.” DoSomething.org. 27 October 2013 . —. “11 Facts Abour Literacy In America.” Do Something. 29 October 2013 . Krugman, Paul. “The Uneducated America.” 9 October 2009. The New York Times. 29 October 2013 . Strauss, Rebecca. “Schooling Ourselves in an Unequal America.” 16 June 2013. Opinionator, Exclusive Online Community From The Times. 29 October 2013 . Weisenthal, Joe. “The Employment Gap Between The Educated and Uneducated Is Incredible.” 6 February 2011. Business Insider. 29 October 2013 . Wooldridge, Frosty. “America Is Filling Up With Dumb People: Immigration’s Ultimate Dilemma.” 22 October 2009. Rense.com. 27 October 2013 .
