CollegeBound Foundation eNews

Student travels to South Africa and India and discovers self

By Kevin Poist, CollegeBound Scholar

I am graduating this semester and will become a teacher, and I have no doubt that I will teach for the rest of my life. Along with my stockpile of knowledge, I will share with my students my experiences of life. If not for the support of CollegeBound Foundation, the burden of my bricks-and-mortar education would have prevented my travels and in turn prevented my self-discovery and left me with only half an education.

I am a philosophy major, so throughout my four years of college I have delved into the Greek language, looking into the etymology of words-their history and how they became the words they are today. I looked up the word "education" and traced its roots. The Greek root means "to draw out." To draw out? Draw out of what? I thought education was about rushing to get a degree in order to immediately join the workforce, climb the corporate ladder, and strive for that ever higher tax bracket? So too, the word "learn" comes from the Greek root "leisure"-and when is the last time our education has been conducted in leisure? We are a culture firmly embedded in the belief that education is the answer to all of our problems--a society thinking about education in terms of diplomas. Yet for the Greeks, education meant drawing oneself out from the barriers of one's conditioning. By "conditioning" I mean one's ideas, beliefs, opinions, prejudices. Today it seems we have lost the essence of what the Greeks meant by education.

College provides the opportunity to stockpile the knowledge and know-how one needs for an emergence into the workforce. But our education should also include an element more true to the Greek origins of the word. And for that drawing away from personal prejudices, a person should become a student of life, not just a student of a specific subject.

I spent six months in Durban, South Africa for a study-abroad program during my junior year. I have never witnessed such dedication to studies. I had never witnessed such dedication to life. My friends and the students in South Africa saw that there was more to life than just an accumulation of knowledge. They studied all the time, but those fifteen minute study breaks when they came out to the common area, put on their favorite songs, and danced--it was a transformation. Birds became phoenixes and humans became gods in the dance. The colors and vibrancy of 150 bodies dancing and pumping with life put studies into its rightful place. In Africa, I learned what it means to dance to the rhythm of life.

I then took a year off from college, having received a scholarship to go to India. I wandered from the north of India to the south, and along my travels met the most beautiful people I have ever befriended. I had many insights in India, but most importantly I questioned myself in India. I began to break out of my "conditioning." A very astute gentleman in India told me: "Do not belief everything you think, for who is to say those thoughts are right?" The gentleman was right. I had never questioned myself before;

I had never observed myself; I had never evaluated my own thoughts. Up until this point in my life, I was only educating myself in half measures. I was educating myself with everything "out there" and never studying "in here."

India taught me what the Greeks meant by "education." India taught me learning happens all the time. India taught me a school is not a building with four walls, it is the whole world.

Kevin is finishing his last semester at Towson University with a major in philosophy and a minor in political science.

Photos courtesy of Kevin Poist.