Why Education is Necessary
This essay is about academic courses that prepared me to work in the Human Services field. Most classes I've taken I've found very valuable, as the curriculum has made me more competent in my service to society and my service to humanity. My very first course was Mental Health and Co-occurring disorders. This accredited academic course has allowed me to put into a very useful perspective the kinds of encounters I've had in my outreach to the community. Two of my favorite, and most useful courses were Social Welfare Policy, and Diversity. Amazingly helpful to improve my understanding of the systems we live in and the people we live together with. Then, Crisis Intervention & Trauma Informed Care was invaluable in helping me understand the type of approach that is needed to foster the kind of healing required in the community, to get humanity into our next phase of social development. I also loved the Introduction to Statistics course, and hope I get the opportunity to take Inferential Statistics, and more advanced statistics courses, perhaps in graduate school. I'll spend a little bit of time covering more specifically the value of several of the course I've mentioned, as it relates to service to society.
The gist of Mental Health and Co-occurring disorders is easy to grasp, as it relates to addiction, especially Substance Use Disorder. That is to say, if there ever was a time when someone could simply achieve abstinence, and their emotional and mental health would simply follow along into a healthy balanced state, that is not likely the case in this day and age. The perspective I took from the course, as it relates to my lived experience and social observation, is that after a time struggling with the addiction of a Substance Use Disorder, there's going to be at least some emotional and mental health issues to address. There is just as likely going to be some psychiatric complications, as well. And, the question of which one came first is starting to look less relevant than the simple fact that Substance Use Disorders and mental health issues go hand in hand.
The two courses Social Welfare Policy and Diversity are intricately related, for many reasons that do not require a scholarly background to recognize. I got to learn about Judy Heumann (Clark, 2025), leading the cause in the 504 Sit-In, a 28 day protest, as the media exclaimed "An Occupation Army of Cripples Has Taken over the San Francisco Federal Building" in 1977, to demand that section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act be enforced. Section 504 is a US civil rights law that "prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in programs and activities that receive federal funding." (U.S. Department of Education, 2025; hhs.gov, 2025) Underscoring the fact that every bit of equality for the underprivileged in The United States has had to be diligently fought for. In Diversity, I was appalled to learn about my own implicit biases as demonstrated to me in the Harvard Implicit Association Test. This test is designed to attempt an objective analysis of an individuals unconscious biases about other groups of people and cultures. (Project Implicit, 2011)
In Crisis Intervention and Trauma Informed care it became apparent that we basically live in a traumatized culture, and that going forward into the future we need to try and heal that, not continue to propagate more trauma towards each other!
The Associates Program, Social and Human Services at Seattle Central College, has solidified my dedication to higher education as a necessity. It is a necessity to put inherent intelligence into a formal context by reputable sources, as the means to understand the world we live in. I must have an applicable and realistic understanding of the world I live in in-order to be of proper service. For me, a formal education is a requirement. It can cause more damage than good if we don't have an adequate understanding of the situations and environments we go in to, even if our idea is to help.
-Ryan
April 30th, 2025
