The Truth: Is Education Enough?

Many times, I have heard people say, “Education is a scam.” There are many reasons why people say this and one of them is that after passing through all the walls of education, some people remain jobless. What is the point of going to primary, secondary, tertiary school and proceeding to further your education when there will be no job? In my country, there are many youths who go around the country, looking for job opportunities. Some of them are even first class graduates. Another reason why people say school is a scam is that literacy does not really determine whether a person is good or bad. For today’s prompt, the Hive Learner’s community asks us if literacy helps make a better person. Does being learned mean people will be less inclined to hurt their fellow human beings?

Growing up, when I was in primary school, my mathematics teacher taught me basic mathematical formulas. He taught us how to add, subtract, divide, and multiply. The English teacher taught us how to construct sentences. They corrected us when we made grammatical blunders, especially when we used present tense instead of past tense. “It is they CAME yesterday, not they COME yesterday.” The Civic education teacher also taught us about the types of government in different countries and how they operate. My history teacher opened our eyes to the history of my country and other countries. I can't deny the fact that the knowledge I have gained from education has made me a better person. In school, my teachers taught me not to tell lies, and even till today, I try as much as I can not to tell lies.

But the important question is that does literacy make you a better person? My answer is yes. Literacy, to some extent, makes you a better person, but there are so many PhD holders out there who are senseless and heartless. Recently, something happened in my school. We all know how landlords can be, especially the mean and cranky ones. They become even more cranky when you fail to pay the rent. Now, a landlord in my school threw one of his tenants packing in the rain. Apparently, the tenant had not paid the house rent for 2 months. I understand that there might be more to the story, but regardless, the landlord should not have thrown her things out in the rain.

Yes, education will make you a better parent and neighbor, but you still have to learn more outside the walls of education. Haven’t you heard of parents who are Phd holders, yet their children are the most rotten kids in the neighborhood? On the other hand, children whose parents are farmers turn out to be good, polite, and nice. Today, everyone is struggling so hard to become educated. Even non-educated people are doing all they can to educate their kids. While this is important, it is also very important to train kids to be good people. Mathematics will teach you how to find X and when to use Cos instead of Tan. History will teach you what happenedq to the second president of your country, but they won’t teach you how to be a good parent, neighbor and person in general. These are the things you learn outside the walls of education.

Thanks for reading through.