What is Education?
In the words of Yeats, Education is not the filling of a pail but lighting a fire. It is a progression towards enlightenment of one’s soul. Education of an individual begins at school. School years are the grounding years of one’s life. Minds of children are like lumps of clay. Whatever falls on them makes an impression. In the innocent minds of children, all questions find easy answers. It is during the school years, that the value system of an individual is formed, his morale is built.
The more you learn more questions you have and the struggle to find their answers makes you learn more! Curiosity brings with itself questions and education is in a way the process of finding answers to questions! School years produce an individual who is all set to take off to his world of dreams and make his dreams come true. So what does school life give? It teaches you to dream. College years teach you to believe in your dreams. They lay the foundation of one’s career. It’s not always about reputed institutes and highly qualified teachers. It’s about institutes fostering a healthy culture enabling nourishment of one’s dreams to see him become a successful individual. It’s about teachers who can give the students the experience of ‘learning’. May it be any field, any stream, but education makes you the kind of person you are. It extracts the human being out of oneself and nurtures it. The task of an excellent teacher is to stimulate “apparently ordinary” people to unusual effort.
I always believe that engineering is not just learning programming languages and networking concepts. It is more of what goes behind the learning. It’s the building of logic, developing an analytical approach and a problem solving nature. It is learning to undergo pressure. It is about the soft skills obtained from practice of giving presentations, seminars, and vivas besides just the written papers. Taking medical education does not mean just the comprehension of human anatomy. They say that man has been able to obtain knowledge of only 2% of the human body. Let it be 2%, but a doctor understands human anatomy better than the rest. A doctor has to shoulder the greatest responsibility of a human life almost every day! He has to face deaths and sorrows. The field of literature brings before oneself lots to read. Literary works of authors help one develop an insight towards life. So, any field of education does not just give you the information related to it but endows you the knowledge of the field and skills that help you live. Information through practice and experience becomes knowledge and knowledge gain is education. More than what you learn, what it took you to learn, is what matters. One learns from the process of learning.
Education equips you with the skill set to live life! Learning to live is the earning from education. It’s not just learning to earn a living. Throughout education, one is always made to realize that he is a social animal, an integral part of society. Right form school education, the natural instinct of a human being to socialize, make friends is well cultivated. One’s power of expression is nourished during education. One is exposed to the competitive world. Exams, which are fundamental to education aim at building a zest to prove oneself, to stand out of the crowd to outclass the others. Exams have a direct mapping to living life. One works hard to earn marks in examinations. On similar lines one has to do his best in life to gain happiness and satisfaction. Scoring in exams can be in terms of marks whereas scoring in life equals to achieving content. Whatever education one takes, it definitely helps one in the profession he takes up. It may be opting to be a housewife (I prefer calling her a homemaker!) or it may be choosing to be in business. The education one has taken has prepared him for life! It has made him the individual he is, ready to ‘live’. It has made it possible for him to begin finding himself. In the words of John Dewey, the result of the educative process is the capacity for further education and thus there’s a long way to go!