Education and Modernization.

Education makes people  easy to lead but difficult to drive, easy to govern but impossible to enslave”: This not only serves as a famous saying from the Scottish lawyer Henry Brougham, but also as a definition for education itself.

                Ever since the first idea of formal education was introduced around 200 years ago, education has undergone tremendous transformations, from just enculturation and socializations which have always been the primary objective of education to analytical and rational abilities. These objectives give you the sanity to discriminate the correct from incorrect, again the exact definition of which has never been understood.

                This reminds me one of Shakespeare’s’ plays “Julius Caesar”, how the supposedly illiterate and therefore fickle minded mob (around 60 BC) of Rome are driven by mere speeches, from supporting Pompey to Caesar, from Caesar to Brutus and finally from Brutus to Antonius.

                Educated minds are rational; they make their own decisions which are usually backed by strong reasons, either emotional or analytical. In fact I’ll like to take it a step ahead to say that those educated people who lack these abilities are perhaps a failed product of our modern education and societal system. Educated minds are flexible, adaptive and open to ideas, they know what their rights are, and are not ignorant to allow themselves to be enslaved. Democracy, I believe is the true outcome of educated minds as it gives the people liberty to choose the head to bear the crown. In one sentence the educated people are easy to lead because they choose to be led; obviously all leaders and no followers shall lead to a state of anarchy.

Thus education gives you the confidence, to allow, being led or governed but at the same time enough fire not to be driven or enslaved.