Polk Education Foundation: Fill & Download for Free

Education provides us with knowledge about the world. It paves the way for a good career. It helps build character. It leads to enlightenment. It lays the foundation of a stronger nation. Education makes a man complete. Kautilya, an Indian philosopher, royal adviser, and professor of economics and political science very rightly underlined the importance of education, some 2000 years ago. He has highlighted the fact that education enriches people's understanding of themselves. He has said that education is an investment in human capital, and it can have a great impact on a nation's growth and development.The importance of education is well-supported by a speech made by US President Barack Obama. In his national address to students across the nation, he said: "... Every single one of you has something that you're good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That's the opportunity an education can provide."The process of discovering what's within never ends.Education paves the path to disillusionment. It wipes out the wrong beliefs from our minds. It helps create a clear picture of things around, and erases all the confusion. It kindles the flame of curiosity and helps awaken the abilities to question, and to reason. The more we learn, the more questions we have, and without questions, there are no answers. Education teaches us to find answers. It makes us more self-aware. It leads us to enlightenment.A direct effect of education is knowledge gain. Education gives us knowledge of the world around. It develops in us a perspective of looking at life. It helps us form opinions and develop a point of view. The information we are constantly bombarded with, cannot be converted into knowledge without the catalyst called education. Education makes us capable of interpreting things rightly and applying the gathered information in real-life scenarios. Education is not limited to lessons from textbooks. Real education is obtained from the lessons taught by life.1. To get a higher paying job, which allows you to be more financially secure.Okay. All college grads get higher paying jobs than dropouts. Take Steve Jobs, for instance. Or Princess Di. Or J. Edgar Hoover.2. Teaches you how to handle responsibility.Then again, given than most of the members of Congress are grads, why are they deeply absorbed in brokering weapons deals for their own states and for their own pockets? As long as the piling up corpses are an American, does it matter? What would college say? What happened between the raised dais of the gorgeous gold diplomas and the grubbing for this day’s vote? Do lawmakers not esteem interesting cultures to be human, and as much a part of the globe as they, the distinguished?3. Gives you the necessary tools to think for yourself and back up your arguments.Why is that important? It might also be great to think about a variety of problems in a variety of ways, some ways requiring book learning and some requiring experience. Some ways require a talent for feeling or voicing. Some base their effectiveness on a plain, old, well-defined and pain-staking thought. College grads and dropouts both share in that responsibility whether they are beekeepers or legal interns, but it seems more and more prevalent for college grads to see education as a ladder up, more money and more power, regardless of what their actions do to their own children. It must be scary to think that they depend as much on high-school dropouts as dropouts depend on grads.What does money really mean, if it is only a path to greater chaos and weak leaders who can’t think outside the joke. Why is education important? Education in all its robes must gather us into the beauty of the garden, the brilliance of difference and the hope for whatever comes next. If I learn this--by caring for spitting-up patients or taking a glider flight around the world--then you know why I was busy and couldn’t make it to Trig this morning.4. Exposes you to more of your peers allowing you to see and experience diversity and different points of view.I’ve seen a point of view in a country church, a Los Angeles taxi-cab and a stadium full of kids who haven’t lived enough yet to suffer the world or to have it suffer them. I’ve seen great dancers on a bus bench. I’ve had friends from New York City and from Guadalajara, and I have heard tremendous stories. I’ve lain flatback in a hospital; thank God, not everyone in a hospital is a surgeon.5. Helps you realize your potential, which allows you to empower yourself to do more than you thought you could do before.Yeah. College does that. It empowers you. To win Civil Wars and have six beautiful healthy children. Go college! Maybe it will empower us to grab with the physicality of our hands and the connections of social media to dance the world; we might find ways to not stink and not fight. You think? In other words, if college empowers you there, up there, does that mean it provides you with the compassion, education and the will to empower, wo, way down there, the people without the money and without the power?6. In the process of getting an education, you make new friends, and these friendships could last a lifetime.But be careful. Be really careful if the friendships are represented by clubs with big bloody skulls. It would be better, I guess, to make friends with a guy who does not know how to spell subversive, than with somebody really, really smart who enjoys making rocket bombs.7. Gives you a better, more developed understanding of the world and current events.Certainly does. Making me wonder why this push is always money and power? Do you stop to think about it?8. Opens up the possibility of more job opportunities.If I get a job, I guess that means that college worked. If I get a job and didn’t get a paper first, that must mean…9. Allows you to learn the mistakes of those who came before you, so that you do not repeat the same mistakes.That’s a relief.10. Learn time management skills and getting things done on time.I think that’s great. Just think if Wernher Von Braun had ever been late.11. School teaches you that every bad action made has a discipline which goes with it.Yeah, Jackson. Yeah, Polk. Yeah, Bush. Yeah, Nixon. Yeah, Bundy…12. Develop social skills for interacting with people you do not normally interact with.Either go to college and pay $12,000 a year, or run down to Skid Row.13. Teaches you organizational skills which will one day come in handy.That is amazingly true. However, I did see a woman with eleven kids. Man, she did the cloth diapers and the Chef Boyardee thing, and when the kids got bigger she got them through Algebra… Oh, but… Come to think of it, she had a college degree.I believe in college. But I don’t pray to the God of Universities. Everybody is different. If we collectively destroy the world by refusing to think things through, then we collectively will be incinerated.

In 500 years I think historians will look back upon the Trump presidency as the beginning of the fall of the Republic. I think that people don’t often understand how dependent self government is upon precedent and the desire of the those are elected to it to maintain its basic principles. Once any faction becomes more interested in gaining and solidifying power rather than adhering to the basic written and unwritten tenets underlying a form of government, especially a government that grew out of a common law heritage, it is only a matter of time until some able and power hungry individual is able to overthrow the checks on his power and establish some form of absolutist control. Every Republic prior to ours has fallen prey to the desire of expediency over divided power and we are no different. In a way we are lucky that Trump got elected because although he does have absolutist tendencies, he and those surrounding him seem to be incompetent. The good news is that absolutists come to power not due to the strength of that form of government but rather due to the weakness of a Republican form of government. This situation can be reversed by using the keys given us in our foundational documents, the free press and education of our fellow citizens about the history, warts and all, of our government. The men who established the beginning of our government were not demi-gods, they were as fallible and self-serving as any human being that have ever walked the earth, It is entirely possible that there are persons walking among us today that are every bit as able as any of those men, we have to find ways of allowing them to rise to the top and supplant the current set of “men of faction” that have the keys to political power.

The Definition of Luckthe force that seems to operate for good or ill in a person's life, as in shaping circumstances, events, or opportunities:good fortune; advantage or success, considered as the result of chance:a combination of circumstances, events, etc., operating by chance to bring good or ill to a person:some object on which good fortune is supposed to depend:Really, there is no such thing as luck. This isn't the movies.The foundation of the United States was not out of some blind dumb luck. There were factors.The British and CultureEven though there were some trace of Dutch, and the French in the 13 Colonies the British was the mother country to the 13 Colonies. The British had the foresight to finance colonies, and to trade territory from the Dutch for nutmeg.Ever since Jamestown the United States culture started to form. Cultural and civil constructs would also transfer over such as a legal, and educational systems. These systems would help the 13 colonies develop overtime to create the United States.Fast forward to the Revolutionary war. The founders did not have luck guide their ways of uniting. Remember, the founders and framers were both educated people guided by the Age of Enlightenment. They looked at Europe, and saw a divided Europe squabbling over resources.All their decision form the Revolutionary period to the ratification of the United States' Constitution were guided by looking at the past from the British, to different philosophies, and even going way back to the Ancient Athenian Greece on what not to do in a Democracy. They looked at current practices to failed practices and applied them to a new form of government. This is not luck.Land Grab and Manifest DestinyWe had leadership that understood that as a nation more land was ideal. Because of economic reasons (that I do not want to get into) the French had a revolution and it went to far. Napoleon stepped in and created order. Napoleon offered a deal for a claim at the Louisiana Territory, and Jefferson grabbed it.Fast forward to President James K. Polk and manifest destiny in which the United States is destined (by God) to be in charge of the land from coast to coast. Polk had policies to claim this land. This was not out of luck.Once the United States had acquired land from coast to coast there was more access to resources, and less competitors. There were two boundaries surrounded by ocean, a bay with minimum population, and only two countries that boarded the United States. This was out of design, not luck.Not only is the United States the fourth largest country in the world, but also have the most habitable land. Land that was easy to develop overtime, and support the largest Western Nation and third largest population in the world.With the combination of resources, and culture the United States developed to what it is today for all the good and bad qualities.