The girth of Education!

The expectation of every human being is to be successful. From a very young age, we (at least the indian students) are nurtured to become successful picking up a profession that s widely regarded and gives fast track success. So what is education really for? To get a job with a fat pay? I wont be a saint and say no. To a certain extent the answer is yes. I have njoyed being a student for the last 18 years with zero responsibility. We are in a materialistic world and in this modern world we need to sell ourselves. So going into a school/college are we really educated?

Education is a life long process. You keep learning new things every second. The schooling and college education helps us to streamline ourselves to keep the learning process going till we perish. As a novice, a raw diamond we enter school. Its one of the most beautiful and essential part of the development of ones' personality. Every time I cross the road I still remember the lessons that I learnt in my II Std. "Look to your right, then left and again to your right, make sure there are no vehicles and then cross the road". Also you get you learn most of your social sense there. All the subjects equally equip you to become a strong individual. I have had fascinating debates with my friends about the why we are studying history or civics. I agree that we want only science and math for getting into a good college and subsequently to get a good job if you take science stream. (I am specifically ignoring other streams because most of the people want engineering/medicine. For others you surely need history and civics. So I am taking about science/math stream people.) Wihout knowing basics like Habeus Corpus, one cannot be a socially conscious person. Knowledge is wealth and we should never limit ourselves.

Next I come to the important point of MARKS, the nemesis for most of us leaving a small percentage of toppers. The number game that is as important as salt is to the food. Our percentages in 10th, 12th and college act as a stepping stone to our success. That dosent mean that those who score less will have a dearth of opportunities. It is just a measure of how you thrive in a system. How you respond to a particular type of competitive framework. Many just use this to do a basic profiling on you. Rather it helps in creating a good first impression. Again the first step in education is to understand that every person in this world is unique and will thrive in a particular environment. When we educate ourselves to be versatile in multitude of challenging situations we become successful. Again Let us not become philosophical and say success varies from person to person and it depends on how they understand that. I am talking about an ordinary common man and not about extraordinaries. And if some one says he is not behind success (other than kung suk wangudu) he is either insane or has a huge ancestral wealth that he is unable to burn out.

Education is much more than the technical prowess that we attain. It helps us change the outlook towards life. It helps us understand our strengths and not to rood over our weaknesses. A truly educated man is fearless, humble, sees both success and failure in the same light, earns respect of friends and foes alike, respects other people, and many more awesome virtues. So nobody is truely learned. Perhaps Lord Ram from the mythology is an example. So do we really get such virtues by going through the grueling process of the indian education system? We have some brilliant colleges, some of the best schools in the world, still our litracy level is not inversely proportional to the crime rate or to put it in a better way the summation of not so good things happening in the society. Education has failed to eradicate superstitions, social evils etc, etc. Educated people hardly come for voting. And a fresh graduate is not ready for anything but attend some company's training.

So other than helping us get fat pays and to a certain extent meaning less degrees, education should help us face all the tricky situations with a stoic mind. As william Durant says

Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.

So let us strive continuously to learn, use what ever education system we have to improve our personality. After all things in the pages of real life is more important and teach us more than the knowledge in the books.