Back in mid-2007, I was in the UK, visiting my parents for my MBA semester break. It was during that visit that the terror attack in Glasgow airport happened, where two men rammed a vehicle loaded with explosives into the airport, intending to enter the terminal, where an explosion would have ended up in a mass killing. As I listened to the details of the incident on the news, I was struck by the fact that the two terrorists (yes, that is the right word) arrested were a doctor and an engineer.
Listening to the educational qualifications of the terrorists, I remember wondering if all those famous quotes about the importance of education really meant anything if people so highly educated, that too, many from the best educational institutions in the world, could end up becoming mindless killing machines in the name of religion. That day, I remember coming to the realization that the notion that it is the poor and the uneducated who are always pawns and weapons in the hands of the radical villains is wrong. Even the most educated ones coming from affluent backgrounds, having a respectable career, are no different.
Today, as I sit reading the news about the zillionth terrorist attack from then across the world, this time close to home, in Delhi, orchestrated by a radical group involving mostly doctors following the teachings of a sanctioned terrorist outfit, I go back to those quotes yet again.
“Education breeds confidence. Confidence breeds hope. Hope breeds peace.” – Confucius
“Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.” – Malcolm Forbes
“Education is the vaccine of violence.” – Edward James Olmos
“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” – Nelson Mandela
Where was the hope that breeds peace in all these countless attacks? Where was the open mind? Where was the vaccine of violence? And what exactly was the change made to the world? In fact, wasn’t education in itself used as a weapon of violence and killing when these educated brutes used their knowledge to make weapons of mass destruction to kill off hundreds and thousands, only because they wanted to prove a point based on religion, the foundation of which is nothing but a belief? I really started questioning for a moment then if all the talk about the importance of education is too much of a glorification. And then, I stumbled on this quote.
“The aim of education is the knowledge, not of facts, but of values.” – William Ralph Inge
(Adding link to clarify the confusion on who the quote is attributed to – https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/09/15/values/)
This, right here, is what education should be about. People often talk about and think of education as synonymous with degrees and the educational institutions one has attended. Have you ever questioned this line of thought after having met someone with impressive educational qualifications, one who has attended top colleges? I have, quite a number of times – in fact, I still do, every now and then. Some of the rudest people with absolutely no manners, no compassion, and no civic sense whatsoever, the ones who are so damn rigid in their beliefs and go on to bully anyone who has a conflicting belief, belong to this category – stellar qualifications and top institutions to boast of (they do boast of that, too).
On the contrary, there are many who have never even seen the inside of a school who excel as human beings. I have been blessed to know some like that too. So the question really is – is education overrated? Not at all. Even these amazing human beings who happen to be uneducated could do a lot more with their lives and for the world or society in general if they were given the blessing of proper education. No two ways about it.
It is our perception of what education is and what education should be that needs to change. Being mother to two school-going kids, I have seen how absolutely paranoid a lot of parents can be about marks and percentages and competitive exams. That reflects more often than not in the drastic steps schools take to placate parents who question why there is not enough homework, why there are less kids with 98% in the board exams, why there aren’t more exams. However, it’s not always that I see a parent talk about true human values that they want schools to impart in their kids.
You complain about the sheer lack of respect for traffic rules on the road? It starts with a parent teaching his/her kid to cycle in the middle of the street, with no talk about the left or right side of the road or the others who want to use the road. You complain about how people use roads as their personal property? It starts with a parent parking in the middle of the road and going into a shop, with absolutely no concern for the other vehicles that are stuck for no reason. You complain about how dirty our streets are? It starts with a parent spitting on the road and throwing a bag of trash onto the roadside. You complain about lack of basic respect for other humans and verbal and physical assaults? It starts with the way a parent yells at the house-help, a security guard, or a waiter. You complain about gender violence? It starts with witnessing domestic abuse and listening to a parent slut-shame a girl on TV.
Just like all this, you complain about terrorist attacks? It starts with fanatic rants among the elders and the “love only ours and hate others” teachings from radical parallel educational systems kids are made a part of from a young age. And then, we say, “Oh! He was a doctor or an aeronautical engineer from so-and-so university! Why did he?” This is why! Because as much as education is a strong tool with the power to change the world for the better, considering it in isolation without intertwining it with positive and humane values, it is also a bitter weapon that can destroy the world, that can make the ones who gain it empowered villains intent on looking down on and destroying others.
The solution to this is not keeping the world illiterate. The solution is in education itself. But for that solution, the older generation needs to change first. The education system in itself has to transition from focusing only on facts and knowledge nuggets that would aid one in competitive exams and the rat race to intertwining it with a strong value system, where our kids learn to appreciate differences; where they absorb the truth that just like them, others are important too; where they learn that everyone is equal no matter how different their beliefs, their social status, their financial standing, and their personal preferences are. Because only when they get away from the shackles of “We are superior, and others different from us are inferior” endorsed by the elders in their life can they use education to really make a positive difference in their own and others’ lives.
Related link (which isn’t in any way about politics, but about the superiority complex many of my people have based on education and literacy rate and the way they belittle others and their preferences):
Also published on Medium.
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