What is education?

A couple of days ago I went to a mall for shopping. While I was shopping there was this boisterous lady next to me who went on treating the service representatives like slaves by rudely asking the service representatives to fetch her the shopping bag, demanding that they get the shoe of her size and ordering them around like she owned the place. I am sure the owner of the mall would have been much kinder to these people or I dont know I could be wrong as a clueless puppy.

Nevertheless, she did come across as someone educated and from a good family. So here is my uncomfortable question: What is education? A degree in some famous college? A professional qualification? Some great status that you achieve because of it? or Speaking fluently in English or some great foreign language? Where did the finer aspects go?

I thought education should make us wiser, more respectful, more responsible and add a lot of mores to it. Are degrees the end all to our lives? Doesn't there exist the value for human life and spirit? If we are educated we should know the value even more! We should respect the lower strata because they are less fortunate and we employ them to do things for us. They are doing it and bearing the physical discomfort for us! Because we cannot do it, rather we choose to pay for it. Paying for it doesn't mean we own them! We owe them !! To expect certain standards is fine, but to feel you own the person is stupid and to be frank illiterate!

There are certain things that today's commercialized education fails to teach us and those are ideals like dont go with what the world thinks. World is not always right! Don't run the rat race, run your own. People at the top have no clue on certain things and they are humans and are equally capable of making mistakes so dont get swayed by their ideas, have your own!! Of course to have your own ideas you need a lot of introspection and a conscience which a lot many of us neither have the time and patience for! Of course we all have time to drink eat and be merry, gossip and take our revenges. But we dont have the time to entertain good thoughts!!

Donate! If you dont donate then whats the point of amassing such great wealth, that "52 inch ka TV which the sharmas dont have!! ha ha" and for god's sake do not donate to show off! That's a new one I have seen Indian celebrities doing! Which is really stupid, considering the fact that they look cheap in the process of showing off. Have respect for people, things, life!! Does not matter if you are prince of timbaktu but you are where you are because there are thousands of people behind you who are serving you. Who do the dirty work for you and provide you the comfort or convenience your money can buy! Your money can buy but you do not own them because of it.

And if you think you are someone, someone great, rich or powerful - dont show off! Give as a result! Often times its the most powerful people that the people go to for help, not because they are pwerful but because they are the ones who can give them what they seek. If you want fairness learn to be fair, if you want money learn to donate, if you want respect learn to give respect. thats the way it should be than demanding what you want and then cribbing when you dont get it when you thought you shoudl have! Ha ha like most of us humans do it anyways! All the time!!

 I would like to quote here what his holiness the Dalai Lama has to say on interdependence of humanity:

Consider the following. We humans are social beings. We come into the world as the result of others' actions. We survive here in dependence on others. Whether we like it or not, there is hardly a moment of our lives when we do not benefit from others' activities. For this reason it is hardly surprising that most of our happiness arises in the context of our relationships with others. Nor is it so remarkable that our greatest joy should come when we are motivated by concern for others. But that is not all. We find that not only do altruistic actions bring about happiness but they also lessen our experience of suffering. Here I am not suggesting that the individual whose actions are motivated by the wish to bring others' happiness necessarily meets with less misfortune than the one who does not. Sickness, old age, mishaps of one sort or another are the same for us all. But the sufferings which undermine our internal peace -- anxiety, doubt, disappointment -- these things are definitely less. In our concern for others, we worry less about ourselves. When we worry less about ourselves an experience of our own suffering is less intense.

What does this tell us? Firstly, because our every action has a universal dimension, a potential impact on others' happiness, ethics are necessary as a means to ensure that we do not harm others. Secondly, it tells us that genuine happiness consists in those spiritual qualities of love, compassion, patience, tolerance and forgiveness and so on. For it is these which provide both for our happiness and others' happiness.

Dalai Lama

If at all education should teach us, it should be a willingness to separate ourselves from the status and backgrounds we have and to look at things and people in a more compassionate, objective and very fair manner. Looks like it skipped a lot of generations. Hope is a good thing. Let's hope that we get to inculcate these ideals in future and probably pass it on to our coming generations. Between choosing the good and the bad, why do we have to become bad in the process? World is bad but not the entire world per say! So why drop the goodness? Shouldn't our education help us in becoming better individuals? Or do we all think that its a bunch of flattering degrees and designations? Where do the ideas go then? Isn't it our duty to use our mental faculties to go further? question? become better? ......

I leave it open ended without a conclusion and leave each to his/her own to conclude on this topic. I just wanted to be the catalyst for some of the willing audience to try and dig deeper. Answers and opinions will vary and i dont want them. Its you who has to answer yourself. I answered mine :)