Importance of Education in LIFE

Today’s post is about an important topic – “Education”. We at WS strongly believe that education can bring about drastic change in one’s life. Education is one of the most important aspect of life. The post is by my dear friend SG.

“Real education enhances the dignity of a human being and increases his or her self-respect. If only the real sense of education could be realized by each individual and carried forward in every field of human activity, the world will be so much a better place to live in ” A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

Such a trivial topic, right?

Does someone really need to write something on this topic? Maybe not. But again, throughout our LIFE we keep missing all that is trivial and natural and keep running after complicated and artificial.

When you are hungry you should eat.
When you are thirsty you should drink.
When you are tired you should rest.

Aren’t these trivial things. But in our day-to-day LIFE do we do this?
Are you eating when you are hungry?
Are you eating only when you are hungry?
Are you sleeping when you are tired at night or you gulp a cup of hot coffee?

Our lifestyle today is full of contradictions. We believe that trivial things will lead to a trivial LIFE, and I don’t wanna live my LIFE trivially. I want to live my LIFE on my own terms, a full-fledged fulfilling LIFE and what we end up doing is breaking many rules of nature. Trying to take control of our LIFE and when we reach to middle age we are already out of LIFE, ridden with life threatening diseases, LIFE energy all squeezed out and hence living on medication trying to extend our stay here. We had paid the cost of going away from trivia and becoming a robot in laboratory.

You may be thinking already, what is this got to do with the topic, but there is a connection. To learn\know is a natural instinct. As soon as we are born, our learning process starts and it ends when one dies. Learning is a continuous process also it is an individualistic process. It does not necessarily need a teacher. When we reach to school age we face our teachers, very important people in life and from there our education starts. I know we say mother is first teacher however there is a important difference. In English we do not have exact word for Guru and mother is first Guru of every child. She is our eyes and ears until we come to senses in this world. Parents are whom we look up to for every doubt and problem until we face school.

Although education is a general term, it is mainly used for academic education. In last 50 years the speed of science and technology inventions has increased geometrically. It has triggered many things to be automated, i.e. handled by machines and devices. This has caused reduced human dialogue and increased need of technical literacy. We are no more in the era where a person who can do signature or write his\her name can be called educated. Education today has got many aspects to it and is not limited to earning a living. One needs to be aware of things like banking, operating ATMs, operating smart phones, communicate with customer care guys. Apart from this one also needs to be aware of the dangers like fishing, vishing, smishing etc. Even the educated urban people are falling for these malicious things one way or other. That means level of education and awareness is far behind what is required.

Hence the necessity and importance of all-round education has increased significantly in last 20 years I would say. If you can not write 10 sentences i.e. fine however you should be able to use know and provide your Aadhar No, PAN No, bank account number accurately wherever required. So not being educated is not an option any more. That’s why we have started considering education as a basic need for survival in today’s world.

With internet revolution, world has become smaller and also smarter. With ocean of knowledge available at a mouse click, internet has power to educate anyone on any topic, only prerequisite is motivation. With companies like Google contributing hugely in linguistic R & D, websites have now been made available in local languages. You can now do banking in local languages. This has opened the doors and opportunities for people who do not know English. Still education remains the basis and key to your success.

Success is a contextual thing and hence definitions would vary however, to put it simply, if you have goals in LIFE, to achieve most of them you will need some sort of education. Level of education may vary. To put it in one sentence:

Even if you hate education you won’t be able to live without it.

An interesting relationship isn’t it?