Literature: Analytical Entry

Education does not necessarily mean attending school, it means to have knowledge and there are many ways to obtain said knowledge. All children from a young age learn to behave from their surroundings. The children grow up and chose to act the way they do from what they know. What they know comes from their environment. What is a child to do if they have grown up in a bad environment; how are they supposed to obtain knowledge? In any case knowledge plays an important role in society. Without knowledge or any education a society fulfills meaningless lives. The idea of equal knowledge may be scary to some, but if done properly it is what the people of America deserve. America's have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, to fulfill all one these the one that that is required is: knowledge. In the story Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut, Harrison Bergeron was only a child when he was thrown in jail. The year was 2081 and the American government had created all of the people as equals. The government used different techniques, such as beautiful people wearing masks, to create one giant social group. They made it so "They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way." (Welcome 7). Harrison Bergeron was considered to be a smart boy, therefore he was considered to be a threat to the government. When he failed to abide by the governments law he went to jail. From there he escaped and tried to show the world that what the government was doing was unfair. His parents, watching him on television, saw him encourage a dancer to take off all her restrictions and be who she wanted to be. As a punishment for being an individual, he and the dancer were both shot. Due to the fact that everyone must have the same knowledge and no one can be smarter then another, his mother and father almost instantly forgot what they witnessed on T.V. There was not enough knowledge for even Harrison’s own parents to mourn for their loss.The people of America in this short story had a common knowledge, but the knowledge they were allowed to have was exceptionally minimal. They functioned as a society, but they were not living. They functioned a society only because that's only what the people knew how to do. They functioned as a meaningless society, which is not necessarily functioning at all. Knowledge provides people with life, opportunities, and ideas. Without knowledge they cannot fulfill their lives with meaningful things. Harrison tried to show America that there was more to life than being equal but was punished because of it. Equal knowledge is not necessarily a negative thing; however minimal equal knowledge creates nothing. The society has influenced the people to give up their right for knowledge and it has lead to no good. This sort of behavior can be transferred to the real world and is shown today.The government now needs to find a way to balance equal knowledge, with knowledge still. This meaning, the government needs to not necessarily lower their expectations or only provide minimal knowledge, but they need to provide settings for positive education. Since so much can be learned from a parent, community, or peers the government needs to create societies were there can be a balance. This would create for not all low-income parents to have children that attend low-income schools; it would create for a mix of middle income to make for a general knowledge. In Harrison’s case the government influenced his surroundings so much that he could not succeed in life. The society that Harrison grew up in did not truly understand knowledge and creating a common knowledge only created the government to fail in providing educations, again. People are not born to fail for success it is how the government has influenced and created their surroundings that leads for failure.