Education: The Backbone of a Nation
Education is the process of facilitating learning, or the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, beliefs, and habits. The wealth of knowledge acquired by an individual after studying particular subject matters or experiencing life lessons that provide an understanding of something. Education requires instruction of some sort from an individual or composed literature. The most common forms of education result from years of schooling that incorporates studies of a variety of subjects. The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education. The goal of education is not to increase the amount of knowledge but to create the possibilities for a child to invent and discover, to create men who are capable of doing new things. It is the most powerful weapon which we can use to change the world.
Education is good but can be really bad and unproductive when it becomes indoctrination. When one talks about education and being educated in this part of the world, people are quick to think about going to the university. They see those that have access to the university education who are regarded as being educated and those without the privilege as illiterate. Having seen and experienced this, I realize that when schooling becomes indoctrination, only the truly educated ones become successful. Now, what does it mean to be truly educated? What does it mean to be indoctrinated? What connection do these two have with schooling? To answer these three significant questions, we will need to define the nouns or verbs from which each of them is derived and analyze them.
Longman Dictionary defines education, a noun from which educated is derived from: the process by which your mind develops at school, college or university. Indoctrinate, a verb from which indoctrination is derived, according to Longman dictionary means: to train someone to accept a particular set of political or religious beliefs and not consider any others. The English dictionary defines indoctrinate as to teach with a biased, one-sided or uncritical ideology.
School, a noun from which schooling is derived, is defined in the English dictionary as: (U.S.) an institution dedicated to teaching and learning; an educational institution. (British) an educational institution providing primary and secondary education, prior to tertiary education (college or university). It must be noted that school is not limited to a certain institution, it is simply any institution for learning and education can be derived from any of these institutions. It is only indoctrination that makes people glorify one ahead of the other. Almost all of us belong to the school of thought that without university education a person is not educated. A polytechnic graduate is always rated lower than a university graduate regardless of intelligence of the former; thus certification has taken the place of real intellectualism and technicality. This indoctrination is a great tragedy to youth development. We have been made to believe that without a university education, we are no better than illiterates are. When we talk about intelligence, people are fast to measure it by the good grades acquired through formal education.
We also have not been studious enough to see the difference: being a university graduate does not guarantee a successful life. The pieces of evidence are here but we couldn’t see. That’s indoctrination. It is a gross waste of time to sit down and wait for admission when what we want to study in school is unrelated to what we really want to become, perhaps in what we are skilled.
It is a lack of vision to accept a change of course just to be a university student, but our society has provided us with no other choice than to “join them if we can’t beat them”. Everyone just wants to answer the name “university graduate” just for the sake of it. Therefore, we forgo our visions, dump our dreams for the title that comes with certificates which we might dump in our wardrobes and not make use of for the rest of our lives. It is true no knowledge is lost but such indoctrination comes with lesser or no profit. For the records, not being a university student does not make a person less or an illiterate. Let us overcome this wrong mentality in which we have been so much enslaved.
University education with a good certificate is an achievement on its own, but it is not the most accurate determinant of efficiency nor does it necessarily enhance productivity or efficiency in the labor market. Year in year out, young boys and girls register for universities entrance exams and when they fail to make the required grades, they are considered failures. The ones that are tired of trying settle for colleges of educations, technical schools or polytechnics while the so-called determined ones, most of whom have no idea what they want to do with their lives, continue in the struggle of rewriting university entrance examinations. They keep making money for the universities when it is certainly most of them have no business being university students.
Now, what does it mean to be truly educated? Going by the definition of education in Longman dictionary, it is the process by which your mind develops at school, college or university. The dictionary only mentions school, college or university in order to foster understanding in a layman, but the true meaning of education is the process by which mind and the whole being is developed through learning. This learning can be acquired in any designated institution. However, there can be no true education where there is indoctrination.
Education is all about learning how to achieve one’s passion and goals while indoctrination, going by its definition, is believing what one is told or what seems agreeable, convenient and best in order to avoid the stress of learning and engaging in its practicality. If one who doesn’t ever attend university is considered educated, then who is uneducated? An uneducated person is a person who doesn’t know anything about his life’s visions and goals and how to pursue them; one who does not have what it takes to succeed in his chosen lifestyle. For instance, if we want to be in life is a footballer and we go to school to study mechanical engineering when we should register ourselves into a football academy and develop our skills, we are simply uneducated. It doesn’t matter if we have a Ph.D. in it. Ph.D. in mechanical engineering will never make us a better footballer. Imagine if Messi and Ronaldo have left football academy to go to university, will they have become the famous and successful footballers that we know today?
However, being an illiterate who is unable to read and write; having less than an expected standard of familiarity with language and literature, or having a little formal education; not conforming to prescribed standards of speech or writing, will always limit anyone’s level of education. Of course, there are natural talents that do not require being taught in order to have them. If one is unable to read and write, he or she will definitely have limited education. Education can be acquired via other sources but literacy or the ability to read and write is vital.
However, being a university student is not the proof that one is educated. For one to be able to sit for university entrance examination he or she must be educated, that is, he or she must be a literate and have at least ordinary level of formal education. That means one can be educated even without a university education. Tertiary education is not for everybody and those who are there are not superior to those who are not. It is only a required type of education for those whose goals and dreams in life could be shaped thereby, but if not it is a gross waste of time and wrong indoctrination.
We should understand and discover our dreams and passions and should give them the most priority. We should take our destinies into our own hands, follow our dreams and not unnecessarily crave for university education and become a nuisance after graduating even with good grades. When schooling becomes indoctrination, only the truly educated ones become successful. To be successful in life requires more than just university education and most significant success stories in life are not as a result of it. The truly educated people are those who are original, resourceful and creative, who dream dreams and think out of the box to attain their dreams and fulfill their passions. They are those that acquire the only type of education that liberate their passions and help them to reach their set goals, not university graduates.
True education is concerned not only with practical goals but also with values. Our aims assure us of our material life, our values make possible our spiritual life. In true education, anything that comes to our hand is as good as a book: the prank of a page- boy, the blunder of a servant, a few table talks – they are all part of the curriculum. True education flowers at the point when delight falls in love with responsibility. No group and no government can properly prescribe precisely what should constitute the body of knowledge with which true education is concerned. No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness, and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure.