Why do we educate ourselves?
Today, I was talking to one of my professors, who is very dedicated to research. It is then that I realised something that had never caught my attention before.
All the schooling, education etc. serve many purposes. At one level, it gives an individual a means to earn a good living. It can make him cultured, though not always. It can make him civilised.
At yet another level, education is the means through which the collective wisdom of ages, in all fields, be it science or philosophy, or any other fields, is retained, and built up to further improve, modify, and fine tune whatever has been already done. Add to this the fact that no individual is going to live forever. So, when he dies, all his struggles through schools and universities is brought to a nought, and rendered worthless. How does it matter to a dead man whether he was educated or not? However, it does matter to the society. For, an educated is more likely to have made a contribution towards the progress of the human society than an uneducated man. Thus, in a way, the real gainer of this entire process of education is the improvement of the human race, and not any particular individual.
I know that there are a lot of seemingly contradicting statements here. This is because I have not taken pains to elaborately define education. Neither have I taken pains to explain in detail what I have said, for the simple reason that I do not have the time and patience. And I am not participating in an essay writing contest. So, if you get what I am trying to say, well and good. Else, it ain't matter.
All the schooling, education etc. serve many purposes. At one level, it gives an individual a means to earn a good living. It can make him cultured, though not always. It can make him civilised.
At yet another level, education is the means through which the collective wisdom of ages, in all fields, be it science or philosophy, or any other fields, is retained, and built up to further improve, modify, and fine tune whatever has been already done. Add to this the fact that no individual is going to live forever. So, when he dies, all his struggles through schools and universities is brought to a nought, and rendered worthless. How does it matter to a dead man whether he was educated or not? However, it does matter to the society. For, an educated is more likely to have made a contribution towards the progress of the human society than an uneducated man. Thus, in a way, the real gainer of this entire process of education is the improvement of the human race, and not any particular individual.
I know that there are a lot of seemingly contradicting statements here. This is because I have not taken pains to elaborately define education. Neither have I taken pains to explain in detail what I have said, for the simple reason that I do not have the time and patience. And I am not participating in an essay writing contest. So, if you get what I am trying to say, well and good. Else, it ain't matter.
4 Comments:
i was planning to post a comment after reading the third para. but ur last one stopped me dead on the tracks.
it all depends wht kind of education are you talking abt.
althou i would say a human learns for his own benefit rather than for the society.
if humans think for the society.. then i am sure human race will improve a lot
My sister, who reads the bible, told me some years ago that the wise king Solomon pondered about the importance of things. He said that wealth was important to man, but when man dies, he won't be able to bring all his jewels and all his money with him to the after life. This led Solomon to deduce that there are things far more important than wealth. So he thought about wisdom. But like all things that are essentially human, wisdom is not permanent. The minute man dies, wisdom is lost, unless that wisdom is passed on to the next man.
Solomon never found his answer on the unspoken question: What is important? Because human as we are and wise though he was, the human mind is ill-equipped to grasp the vastness of the Divine.
So I agree that education (the culmination of wisdom through the ages) is not beneficial to a specific individual. Its ultimate purpose was to better mankind as a whole. That's not saying though that the individual won't benefit from it.
And the mere act of trying is a worthy act in itself. That is why we do what we do and we say what we say even when there's every chance that what we do and what we say won't necessarily be understood by others.
Crap :-& >:-p
There is totally no motivation to have remiss tangles in link your particular letter. This incorporate punctuation, word decision, and in particular spelling.
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