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Do you agree or disagree with the following statement?

People are now easier to become educated than in the past.

Over two centuries ago, Benjamin Franklin describes to us his rugged road to get himself educated in his celebrated autobiography. His schooling ended at the age of ten. Being a self-taught man, he initially worked as an apprentice in his brother’s printing house and later as a bookkeeper in Philadelphia, where he created a reading group. At that time, education is a privilege of the rich. Nowadays, thanks to technologies and shifted social notions of education, people from remote hamlets to metropolis alike can share the opportunity of education.

To begin with, technologies positively contribute to the welfare of mankind. The advent of internet, for instance, makes education accessible to billions of people worldwide. Distance learning grants residence of Pacific Islands, like Fiji and New Guinea, the convenience of delivering schooling online to the local kids rather than sending them to the mainland. What’s more, during the past two years, open courses prove to be the most popular channel for students and adults in China. From MIT to Harvard, from Positive Psychology to Justice, from Calculus to Cooking, internet puts thousands of undergraduate courses in the hands of numerous audiences around the globe and caters to their distinctly diverse tastes. Those series of TED lectures are quite phenomenal as well. Students like me are thrown into a torrent of brilliant ideas and inspirations, ranging from cutting-edge technologies to the frontier of scientific development. How lucky we are!

On top of that, education is getting increasingly universal as time goes by. The trend has switched from the traditional elite-oriented approach toward mass-oriented principle. In my grandparents’ day, only a handful of talented people can be admitted to universities. Today, as a result of the expansion of universities, virtually three out of four children finish higher education. Besides, compulsory education, supported by government budget, endows every kid the equal chance to be literate, regardless of their financial status. In terms of parents, they attach greater importance to the upbringing of their children, and are willing to pay as much as they can to provide the best affordable education for the sake of adding competitive edge to their descendants. Plus, we have certain TV programs in which scholars turn abstract and sophisticated philosophical ideas into plain words, thus ordinary people are exposed to classics and subjects that seem formidable before.

In conclusion, as Benjamin Franklin trudged through his path of self-taught education, we find ourselves in the midst of a golden era with groundbreaking technologies and favorable social values toward knowledge. Our rate of illiteracy is considerably lower, and our inner world notably enriched. It seems undeniable that education has been easier to obtain today than decades or centuries ago.

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