Since the class is now officially over, a more natural reflection process is beginning to take the place of where I have been Mondays and Wednesdays at 10am.

The final days of class revealed several things for me: education spans far across the realm of the living. The broad horizons of the participants of this class proved that to me, of all the people I met this term, you people were the among the greatest!  I cannot fully express how impressed I am to have been part of such a group of well traveled people. The areas of the Earth we have walked have already seen our footfalls, and not to mention, oh the places we all will go. Surely, this age of humanity is destined to experience the effects of modern travel.

And after we have witnessed the world’s maganimity, there will come a time when the education of our children (maybe its now) becomes the foremost topic in our minds. The approaches to education may appear more clear to us now, how do communities take the approach? Are our children subject a school system impressed only by standardized test scores or the prospect of future economic returns on our children?

One of the greatest challenges of mine in this course was in becoming too philosophical on this subject. And while it seemed that many writers and classmates took preference to Sen’s human capability theory, it takes a level of honesty to look at the historical perspective and say “hey maybe all that human capital theory was necessary to get us where we are,” hard work pays off in the end.

If I remember correctly, and I often do, then one of our definitions of Education, was its equivalence to “empowerment.” After a few weeks of disintegration, I hope that feeling of empowerment through the forms of education we explored in INTL 399, will set in.