UNDERSTANDING THE MEANING OF EDUCATION

Until we radically understand the meaning of education, we will never know that factually all our forefathers and mothers are well educated, and many of our youths today who are still in school, have been to school and that can speak well will continue to expand in their ignorance because

·         Education is not going to a school

·         Education is not the mastery of the means through which education is giving

As Henry Miller once put it, "One thing is certain today – the illiterate are definitely not the least intelligent among us. If it be knowledge or wisdom one is seeking, then one had better go direct to the source. And the source is not the scholar or philosopher, not the master, saint, or teacher, but life itself – direct experience of life."

Education is not a place and it does not aim just to help you speak and write, that we should measure it based on where one acquires knowledge or on how fluently well one can speak – speaking and writing are natural to man. The nitty-gritty and major purpose of education is to prepare you for life of which speaking and writing is a minute aspect. There are speech-impaired and illiterate who lived a fulfilled life and died happily and there are scholars and professors who lived a frustrated and sad life and ended up committed suicide.

If education should be measured by going to school or mastery of the means – ability to speak or write which are natural to man, then many people who went to school and can speak well but cannot perform excellently well in their positions of responsibilities are more educated than many people who hardly completed a certain level of education and went no further but are known to be experts performing excellently well in those positions where those schooled fellow fail. No. If you can speak or write fluently well, you are literate and that does not mean you are educated.

WHAT IS EDUCATION?

Education is knowledge (information) and the ability to apply. Many a graduate who are unable to perform their duties or job responsibilities adequately well did not understand education from this perspective and thereby failed to acquire as much knowledge as would allow them to better respond to life after school. The failure that often comes with lack of this understanding about education is inability to properly assess one’s educational growth, which is not to be based on class or school level, but on how much you know in equivalence to your class or school level. What I am saying is this: an undergraduate Part 2 student who does not know as much as that of an SSS 2 student may consider himself being more educated than any secondary school student by the virtue of school level. Such an undergraduate is just fooling himself. But if he understands education as knowledge and its application, then he will know that he needs to buckle down to knowledge acquisition on which society will evaluate him.

You don’t just go to school for going sake, but to acquire knowledge about a certain activity. If you acquire the knowledge and you are able to apply it accordingly, then you are educated. One is not educated because they can speak or write but because they do what needs to be done. This means many of those people who you likely think are not educated, but make it in life are actually educated, only that it is not as you understand it.

You do not have to go to a school to be educated; you only need to acquire knowledge or information on any activity that you want people to consider you educated. This you can do anywhere aside school. However, you need to understand that a school is a place specially organized for proper acquisition of knowledge, and this will come with evidence of your education which is a certificate.

By Akerele Segun Helen

Read the next post: HOW TO PROVE YOUR EDUCATION WITHOUT A CERTIFICATE. This post is one of our posts in the UNDERSTANDING THE REASONS FOR GRADUATES’ JOBLESSNESS AND HOW YOU CAN ESCAPE IT Series. You should also read the introductory post THE POWER OF QUESTIONING AND DOUBTING and also WHY MUST I GO TO SCHOOL? Go back home.