Brian Holdam
Comp. 1
28 October 2013
College: A Better Path? “College without motivation is pointless” (Ganah 248). Growing up young children are forced by law to attended school until they are eighteen. It is funny how school is “forced” upon American children while in most of the world young men and women are literally dying to be educated. The phrase ‘knowledge is power’ however cliché is still one of the truest statements ever said. So why do we have so many young people whom do not seem to care at all about this gift? Without knowledge we would be complete lost. It is unimaginable to people to think that what if one morning everyone woke up and the internet was gone forever. In this society great portions of children learn to use an Iphone before they learn to read a phone book, and some not even knowing what a phone book is. This lack of education for a nation’s youth and respect for education has got some of the most intelligent scholars in an uproar. Why are so many young people so complacent about further education? “We’ve heard it all to many times before:130,000 children bring guns along with their pencils and books each morning; juvenile arrest for murder increase eighty-five percent from1987 to 1991; more than three thousand youngsters will drop out this day and every day until the end of the school year” (Barber). These high school drop outs are definitely not going to college but who is to blame? It all relates back to motivation. The motivation to learn is being drowned by the fantasy of get rich quick. The youth are all sponges. They absorb most anything, completely oblivious to what is being brought in. Teachers, the people dedicated to providing education, make less teaching in America than in Berlin, Tokyo, or Amsterdam. Is America not supposed to be the world leader? It is taught that America is this all powerful entity; yet we as a country cannot even properly fund education? “Americans do not really care about education-the country has become comfortable with the game of let’s pretend we care” (Barber 115). Between the lack of Government involvement, effort on the students part, and influences of outside sources American education seems to be on a steady decline. College is a great experience, “but college has never been able to work its magic for everyone. And now that close to half our high school graduates are attending, those who do not fit the pattern are becoming more numerous and obvious. College students are selling shoes, driving taxis; college students sabotage each other experiments and forge letters of recommendation in the intense competition for admission to graduate school. Others find no stimulation in their studies and drop out” (Bird 126). These young men and women that went to school only to get out and find no jobs are no rare occurrence. In a strenuous job market even the highly educated have trouble securing good jobs; furthermore, this makes it nearly impossible for a high school graduate to land a decent job. College is a privilege not a right. College is about to become the only way