2. The Essence of education

There is a saying – “Education is in itself an education”. What is the basic aim of education? Is it to just the transfer a whole lot of knowledge from the different specific domains over a period of time? Education should be able to equip a person with the capability to think, apply the acquired knowledge in actual situations and most of all, it should make him/her a better person. When I say “capability to think”, I don’t just mean the logical analysis of a technical problem, I am referring to the ability to think and analyze the value of life and the notions of “personal satisfaction” and “identifying your priorities”.In the process of acquiring knowledge, we deal with various situations and face certain hindrances, which we overcome eventually. This exposure prepares us to face the real world at a later stage of our lives.When you see a ladder, can you estimate it’s length without using any instrument? Just by observing the sun, can you roughly guage the time of the day? At any instant, if you are asked to give a rough estimate of the cost of an outing to the movies, how accurately will your answer be? If there is a half filled bucket in front of you, can you give the quantity of water in it? These are a few real world situations where we tend not to apply our technical knowledge. We have learnt a lot about “Mensuration”, calculating areas and volumes of different surfaces, but we restrict the use of that knowledge only for the exams. The ability to identify real world application of the knowledge acquired is a very important asset, which an education should provide.My math professor used to tell us “Your marks may not be important for long but your character will be important forever”. He is so right, because it is on the basis of your character that you are judged throughout; your personality reflects the qualities of your character. Academic brilliance is recognized, but so is a good character. Special emphasis on character building is necessary. There is also the saying –“If you get the bigger things/aims right , the smaller things/aims automatically fall in place.” To illustrate, you are given two jugs, one with huge stones and one with small pebbles and sand grains. If you fit the big stones over the smaller pebbles, it just wont work out. Whereas, if you put the pebbles in the gaps between the huge stones, then the two jugs care made fit one. So, if one is able to absorb the essence of what his/her education has offered, then the technical/bookish knowledge and the logical reasoning capability will automatically fit into the person’s mind. In a nutshell, if you know why you are being bombarded with information from various domains of knowledge, you will have a clearer understanding of the various spectra of understanding, also you will naturally acquire the ability to apply this knowledge to the real world situations.