Values vs. The American Educational System :: bell hooks College Education

Values vs. The American Educational System In "Keeping Close to Home: Class and Education," bell hooks suggests that the American educational system forces individuals to hide, change, or mask the values that they bring with them to college by sharing her perception of the sickening class division at Stanford. Perhaps "influence" makes a better term than "force"; this change in terminology allows a better argument and saves the readers from a misleading idea of the American educational system. hooks explains that "education as the practice of freedom becomes not a force which fragments or separates, but one that brings us closer, expanding our definitions of home and community" (95). The University of Georgia does not force its students to hide, change, or mask the values that they bring with them to college; instead, the university offers them the choice of keeping their values or letting these values slip away by giving them the freedom to express themselves in every aspect. This freedom allows the students to be who the y want to be. If brought to trial, the institution of the University of Georgia remains innocent; it has not exercised pressure on me to change my values, but has drawn me unconsciously into altering my values. I believe inner strength can hold an individual and his or her values together. A person's values are factors that create the person’s identity; without these values, one loses his or her connection to the past. Many students, however, fall in the hands of the influential social interactions and university expectations that often lead to the unpleasant change in their lives. I have been a victim of this change because of my freedom to choose. It will be hypocritical of me to state that I possess the strength to fight the university's influential activities. It hurts to see a person lose connection with his or her past; without his or her past, he or she remains incomplete. It hurts me more to realize that I am one of those people who remains incomplete and weak, and that I was not strongly connected to the values taught by my parents. Born and raised as a Catholic, I expected my religious values to be of great importance; I was wrong. When I lived under my parents' supervision, going to church was my job. I still remember those Friday nights when the whole family would sit together in front of our homemade altar to pray the rosary.