The following is junior Christian Wells winning essay in the USS Missouri Essay Contest.
On the morning of September 2nd 1945, the world watched as the Japanese surrendered to the United States, ending one of the bloodiest wars in human history. The end of World War II brought about new challenges and a new opportunity at global prosperity. General MacArthur’s speech at the ceremony created hope by offering a possible solution to bring about global peace. MacArthur states that a change of the spirit is required to save the flesh. Every human being has the ability to change ones actions, but we must reach deep inside of ourselves to achieve a change. To bring peace, we must change the complete idea of the human character through social education and the improvement of morals in our current society.
Society has changed a lot since General MacArthur’s speech, but his message still holds true to today’s society. Everyone wishes for world peace but no one is willing to work for it. It takes more than wishes and good intentions to bring about world peace. It will take every individual to achieve complete world peace. Many bad things can happen in quest for world peace; some of the best intentions can lead to the worst of actions. We need to educate our current society in social education in order to avoid making these critical mistakes.
No human system is perfect; by nature humans are flawed. Something greater than the human element is needed to bring major change to this world. I believe the change we need can be found in the soul, and the only way to discover this in every human is through educating the social morals of the world. We need to understand our society and the many various cultures that make up our diverse earth. We are all human, no matter what race or background we come from; this understanding is necessary and can only be taught through social education.
Morals are the distinction between right and wrong. Moral values in current society have been severely diminished; the line between right and wrong is becoming blurred. We need to put our advances in technology and science to the right use. Our society needs to be pointed in the right moral direction. Instead of building new technology for warfare, we can improve the education of our youth so that they can understand how to prevent war in the future. It takes little steps like these to bring about a big change to society.
Scientific discovery has the potential to help facilitate the advancement of society or bring the world to violent end. The moral lines must be redrawn and solidified to make the world a better place. We must teach the world the difference between right and wrong and the importance of staying morally right. Society needs to understand that every action has a consequence that, no matter right or wrong, affects everyone. We are responsible for our own actions, we must learn to accept this and improve on our mistakes.
We, as humans, have the opportunity to make the world a better place by making our tomorrows better than our yesterdays. If we leave the world a better place than we found it, who knows what we can accomplish. Social education is a perfect way to teach our society the proper moral values needed to make the world a better place. It won’t be easy, but together we can make this dream a reality.