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Miyako: Ooh, that last one was a bit hot.
John: Try this one, but be careful. It’s even hotter.
Miyako: Phew! It’s as hot as anything! It’s burning my mouth.
John: Here, have some beer.
Miyako: That makes it worse.
John: Don’t think about it. Just keep eating and talking. When are you going to go overseas?
Miyako: I don’t know. I’m not really happy at university at the moment. I don’t have enough experience of life. I sometimes think my time at university is wasted because I am too young.
John: Why don’t you take a year off and go overseas? Work a bit and travel around. Broaden your experience and then come back here and finish your studies when you are a bit older and more mature and you have a bit more experience of life.
Miyako: Maybe, I will. You know, I have been thinking a lot about education. I mean, what is education? What is it really?
John: Education is not just what you learn in school.
Miyako: That’s for sure. Education is learning about life. Or at least, education should be learning about life. Sometimes it is just studying stupid books and doing stupid tests, and listening to boring teachers, and bored teachers, and spending time with childish students.
John: Yeah, sometimes it is like that but it doesn’t have to be like that. It should be different.
Miyako: Education is not just reading books and doing tests. Education is listening to people and talking to people and learning about life in other countries and learning about new ideas and new ways of thinking and discussing social problems. Education is about meeting people. It is about developing your understanding of people. People are really important. People are everything! I’m sorry. I’m talking too much. I am raving on.
John: Not at all. It’s great. You are making sense. You are making a lot of sense. Keep talking. Don’t stop. Keep talking! It’s great!

Tags: adjectives, comparatives, Dialogues, education, education-and-evaluation, food, future-will-tense, gerund-as-object, gerund-as-subject, gerunds, hot, idioms, keep, make-sense, miyakos-education, negative-question, older, present-continuous-tense, present-passive, present-perfect-continuous, present-simple-tense, sense, should, what-clauses