Journal Entry #3

As North Americans, many of us find privelage in several aspects of everyday life. From quality of life to education, we find ourselves surrounded in opportunity. Through this mindset we become used to hand-out education, and when the time comes to reach out for it, we either cannot be bothered, or do not posess the ambition to seek it. This is usually the source of citizens taking education for granted, and overall leads to the decline of our civilization.

It is common for parents, relatives and close friends to look after people at a young age. Each family has it's own limitations and ideals, but the concept stays similar. They are constantly attended to and barricaded from a great deal of the world. These traits pass as they get older, but sometimes do not leave quick or slow enough to have a proper impact. Several parents that let their children have too much freedom too early make them corrupt and most likely exposed to the parts of life that are more difficult to handle alone. On the contrary, parents that keep barriers in their children's lives for to long keep them sheltered and spoiled - unable to fend or think properly for themselves. Most often this type of behaviour is caused from fear.

Claims are constantly made of government conspiracies against the population - targeted news, imbeslement - and with the way others act around us, it is understandable that we would become afraid. The more we fear, the more sheltered we become; leading to selfish squandering of effort towards our own needs. In this circumstance, we condition eachother to live selfishly and sometimes lose track of important values. The values that we lose would be values that helped our prioritization of things like health, significant others and education. We naturally lose track of these things when things seem bleak, but in other places, people condition each other to live well when exposed to these situations.

Living conditions in certain underdeveloped countries, such as Somalia or South Africa, are very poor. Many people starve to death every day and others barely manage to live with the limited resources that are available. With civil war, famine and in some places disease, education becomes a lower priority than survival. Because civilians know this, they will fight for what they need and live off of whatever they can. In turn, however, education proves as an escape from this lifestyle, and becomes an important goal.

Since education is not often available to everyone, people need to fight for their chance to learn. This also raises the expense of schooling which further limits who is able to attend. In some places, entire communities will pool money in order to afford to send one citizen to recieve an education. As unfortunate as it may be, this greatly displays how much more these citizens value their education than we do.