Friday, October 10, 2014

Indispire# Educated or literate ?

Education I believe is that light which illuminates the darkness of ignorance and brings forth the glory of knowledge.
The real objective of education is to impart knowledge and awareness to a person, to make a person sensitive and aware of himself, his surroundings, to impart him the moral values, to make him responsible towards himself as well as the society. It’s the development of mind and soul of a person.

The question is -Is today’s education system taking care of each and every aspect.
The literacy rate is surely going up.  The no. of degrees issued per year are also increasing. No. of schools  and colleges increasing every year.  But does being literate automatically makes us educated as well?If it would have been the case I suppose with increasing literacy rates and more and more graduates and post graduates , we should rather see a fall in crime rate which is ever increasing. While the literacy rate increased from 64.83% to 74.04% from 2001 to 2011, the child sex ratio dipped to 914 from 927.
Everyday we can see so many headlines of rapes, murders, terrorist activities, khap panchayats, love jihad. The pity is that well educated people or rather quite literate people are also getting involved.

It is a well known fact that almost everywhere in India people still object to inter caste marriages and that happens in affluent, highly qualified , well to do families as well.

Our country witnesses so many cases of female feticides. The women are not safe even in the company of educated or rather literate. Young chaps – some of them just take pride in eve teasing. Those may well have degrees but education is lacking in them.

Terrorists - isn’t it surprising that so many of them are highly qualified. Many of them hold engineering degrees. They earned the degrees but could never learn the real meaning of education.

The youth – isn’t it discomforting to see that many of our children have started smoking and drinking as early as in the high school. While everyone is all out for higher grades and higher percentages, they are just being deprived of the real education.

One may well keep on collecting degrees but real education is different from just being literate. It’s the development of one’s conscience- the sense of right and wrong. It’s about being sensitive towards oneself and others. It’s about developing a way of life which is based on compassion, mutual respect, and moral values.

Collection of degrees might well be literacy but education is about expanding the horizon of ones mind.

2 comments:

  1. expanding horizons of ones mind towards enlightenment...well penned

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