Pink Floyd was wrong. Extremely wrong. So wrong in fact that its well-known lyric, “We don’t want no education,” is an assault on the ears of any person who considers themselves to be grammar aficionados.

As ironically implied by its error-laden sentence, Pink Floyd was undoubtedly wrong about needing education. They required it and we need it too, especially that now-a-days, a bachelor’s degree is often a rudimentary ticket to entry for low-level jobs. In reality, with the current economic funk sending far more and much more individuals back to higher education, it is no stretch to recommend that our society certainly values education as a way to move up in the world—or at least hold onto wherever 1 is at present.

Our value of education and the importance it holds is readily reflected in our literature. Authors often use characters’ educational training as a plot approach to move them beyond their lowly status and succeed. In that way, education is fundamental to the American dream, the individualistic doctrine that says if you work difficult adequate and learn tough adequate, you will move up in the globe. Education makes it possible for social mobility it empowers the lower castes of society to pull themselves up by their proverbial bootstraps and make something of themselves.

No clearer literary example of this can be found than in Jay Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s self-reinventing tragic hero for which his classic novel The Fantastic Gatsby is named. Gatsby—whose real name is Gatz—comes from a poor, Midwestern loved ones with small inheritable possible for greatness. So he does what any red-blooded American does: he fakes it until he makes it. He takes a page out of Wonderful Expectations and begins hanging out with the cooler folks.

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Though he does not boast of it, the dude went to Oxford, only for 5 month. . Name recognition getting every little thing, his new social-elite status is built on that fake education, which other people use to buoy his credibility as somebody of worth. A look at some Wonderful Gatsby quotes, specially when Tom tries to discredit Gatsby’s education as to demean him, shows what value it has.

Never ever mind that his past catches up with him, or the fact he was murdered by an uneducated auto mechanic—the tiny Oxford detail encapsulates what is at the heart of the novel. The level of education distinguishes among who is upper class and who is lower class, and by the logic, the higher your education is, the higher your status will be. Even if it ends up becoming a total lie, thus implying the American Dream is shoddily built on arbitrary distinctions like higher education and unlikely to withstand any intense economic weather or destruction.

Another superb literary example of education serving to buoy a character—whether it is an authentic 1 or not—is Jane Eyre. Jane Eyre’s education is primarily aesthetic feminine crafts—sewings, music, maybe some foreign language—but it still enables her social mobility and dollars as a orphaned young woman. He education is her safe haven from her awful relatives, and ultimately allows her to turn out to be a de facto teacher, governess and then wife of a super rich guy. Granted, the plotline is a bit a lot more complex and convoluted than that, especially with the novel’s gothic elements and the crazy old pyromanic lady in the attic, but Jane Eyre’s formal education is what got the ball rolling.

While it might no longer be the case that education is the solve-it-all for society’s lower citizens, it has definitely been mythologized and painted that way—a necessary stepping stone to a high status and a much better life.