The Education Of Little Tree Essay, Research Paper
The Education of Little Tree
In the movie, The Education of Little Tree, the young boy learns many of life s most important lessons. Three of the lessons that I feel are most important are; The Way , how to learn from ones mistakes, and finding your secret place. In the personal evaluation that follows, I will discuss why I feel that these are such important lessons.
Little Tree s grandparents, with some help from Willow John, teach him The Way [of the Cherokee] . I feel that this is one of life s most important lessons. Not necessarily the Cherokee way, but the way of life in general. This lesson help s us to understand that things may not always work the way that we would like them to. In my eyes, this is because we do not, and never will, completely be in control of our lives. I believe that their is some power higher than ourselves that is in at least partial control of our lives. I also believe that this higher power, whether it be fate or God, helps guide us to a more complete life. To me life is a lesson in itself. It is all a learning experience to prepare us for the next life. One of my favorite parts of the story is when Little Tree s grandparents pass on, they say It has been good. I ll see you soon. They view death as a new beginning, not as an end.
Throughout the movie, Little Tree is making mistakes and learning from them. I also think that this is a very important lesson in life. Making mistakes is part of life. Learning from them so that we don t repeat the same mistakes again can be hard sometimes. This can be applied to the classroom in many ways. If you stay out late the night before a test instead of studying and do poorly on a test, the next time you should consider an alternative. One possibility is to find a way that let s you go out and have fun, but come home early enough to study the material for the test. I think that the way Little Tree s grandfather teaches him this lesson by letting him make mistakes instead of preventing them is the same way that a teacher or parents should teach children and students. If your parents or teachers don t allow you to make mistakes, you will probably be less likely to learn the lesson. Even though they think they are doing a good job by preventing these mistakes from happening, the child or student may behave rebelliously toward this.
Finding your secret place can help to teach you about yourself. In this lesson, Little Tree found his secret place was a place to go by himself. Everyone needs a place like this. Somewhere to be alone with your thoughts. In a way it helps you find yourself through self fulfillment. Little Tree learns about what interests him, the mysteries of his cultural background. This can be helpful in ones education. It helps you learn about what you would like to do with your life. It can give you direction. It is also important because no two people are exactly the same. Each person has a different style of learning. A person will get more out of their education if they are taught and learn in the style that applies to them. The lessons referred to in this paper are just a few that I believe are important in a persons education and in life in general. A persons education never stops, we all learn new lessons everyday. It is just The Way it is.