Why do we need an education?

Shruti P.

Why do we need an education?

Why do we need an education? This is one question that has been asked to me by many students. In return I ask them why they are in school? The usual answer is to study, to learn, to meet friends, to play games, but very reluctantly almost all of them agree that they are in school because they don’t know what else to do, they have no other choice. When people would ask them what they were doing, they wouldn’t know what to say. So, it is a given that the way we eat, drink and sleep, likewise we go to school period. Now, that one is in a school, better get an education. But what is education? To quote from Wikipedia, “Education is the process of facilitating learning, or the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, beliefs, and habits.” When this acquisition happens in school, it is called getting a formal education. Very often we put education and marks in the same bracket. To us getting good grades is synonymous to getting a great education. The fact is both are two different things. Anyone can get good marks if one has the ability to retain what one has learnt and can reproduce it as it is on a paper during examination. People say that life would be great if you score big and get a great education. The truth is none of them can guarantee a good life. Honestly speaking, parents want their wards to score big so that they can brag about their achievement and claim to be good parents. Teachers want their students to score big so that they can market themselves to be a great school. What do marks get you? Good marks get you a good impression. When you go out for an interview, your marks tell the interviewers that you are sincere, hardworking and persistent even before you have met them. Because only intelligence doesn’t get you marks, perseverance does, even if one is a little low on intelligence. The marks you score help you get this impression and first impression must be good! Add to it the confidence, adulation and the sense of worth that you get. Marks give you a high. And then these marks help open the doors to better education for you. They take you to places where you meet like-minded people, share ideas, get to understand yourself better, try to experiment with what you think is right, realize the flaws in your thought, personality and action and most of all prepare yourself for life. Books are the best teachers, so is life but nothing beats a good education. Whether one learns music from the best teacher, the best school or on one’s own it is the number of hours one puts in that make all the difference. Learning from a teacher or in a school will help one identify one’s mistake and work on it and will make the path a bit easy. Learning on one’s own, there’s no one to correct so one makes mistakes after mistakes and then learns but much crucial time is lost in the process. Education makes learning easy. Eiffel Tower was built by Gustave Eiffel’s company, the Statue of Liberty by Bartholdi and Eiffel, Burj Khalifa by Adrian Smith, and Shah Jahan got the Taj Mahal constructed. All well-known buildings bear the name of the one who either commissioned it or is its architect, while the truth is that it was built by the masons and labourers. Education helps you get the name because it gives you the vision to do great things and not follow orders. It is not important who you learn from, but it is important that you learn. Education teaches you to learn. As Shakuntala Devi put it, “Education is not just about going to school and getting a degree. It is about widening your knowledge and absorbing the truth about life.” If one were a seed, education is the soil, water and sunlight that nourishes it, nurtures it and empowers it to not only to grow for itself but also for those around it. I feel one needs an education to change one’s own self into a better person and to change the world around into a better place for everyone. So, go change the world, make a difference and education will help you do it.

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