education//

I think David Foster Wallace’s theory on education basically says that education doesn’t only include academic knowledge but also having knowledge of reality and of the things around you.  One of the many things he said which struck me the most was “The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.” His whole speech talks about how we have the freedom to think and do what we want and with this freedom, we tend to just be in our own universe and we tend to just think about ourselves unconsciously. However, it shouldn’t be like that. This quote is saying that the best kind of freedom is having to think about others as well and not just focus on yourself because there are things beyond the physical aspect of everything. (Everything has a reason). Personally, I think his theory is very spot on. Back in my home country, if a person acts very selfish or rudely, he/she is dubbed as “uneducated” despite his/her academic background.

Moving back to the speech, this theory on education fits in Alice Munro’s writings in a way that Munro’s writings open up the readers’ minds to a whole lot of emotions and experiences. She as a writer provides character development for each of the characters in her stories which gives the readers the opportunity to be aware of what they are going through and how these affect them. Also, Munro doesn’t only focus on the protagonist. She makes sure to include informations and insights of the other characters in the stories. The readers get to see different perspective which broadens out their understanding and knowledge of the story.

Moreover, both writers present issues to the audience with the use of imagery very effectively so that the audience can relate to the characters in the story. This develops the audience’s emotions and empathy since they get to see different perspectives and not only theirs. Both writers encourage the readers to improve their emotional intelligence in a way that we should always take into consideration all the possible aspects which may have contributed to a certain event/person.