Education - it's a treasure

Earlier education was considered to be of great value. Because it was accessible to only a few.

This is how valued was the job of a scribe (back then only scribes were educated) in Ancient Egypt: "Be a scribe! It will free you, this post, from taxes, protect you from works. It will remove you from a mattock and you will not have to carry a basket. It will separate you from rowing and oar, it will remove you from efforts. You won't be under numerous lords and numerous chiefs". Two points: 1) education liberates a person from hard physical labour and 2) it makes a person more free. Education was a rarity, it gave one a respected position in society and because of that, it was highly valued.

Mass education appears in ancient Greek towns-states together with the birth of democracy. Citizens could actually govern the country, as the supreme body was a national assembly where any citizen could participate. He needed to have understanding in the affairs of the state and that demanded education. The main subjects in private schools (in Ancient Greece there were no state schools) were gymnastics, grammar and mathematics. Education was valued as a right and as a condition of being a responsible citizen.

Here is a fragment from a famous Chinese book "Tao Te Ching": "In antiquity, those who followed tao, didn't educate the people, but made them ignorant. It is difficult to rule people who have knowledge". The wise book is undoubtedly correct: educated, thinking people are uncontrollable. They can criticize decisions of authorities, they can begin to show initiative, they can start to write books, they begin to think... all of this cannot be controlled. Of course, harm from books can be huge. It is not a coincidence that antidemocratic regimes burned and forbade books. It is much easier to deal with uneducated masses.

Thus the first value of education — it makes the person vigilant, responsible member of society.

However when in modern times education became a mass phenomenon, something we're used to, its value diminished. It seems almost as given to us by nature. Along with that came a belief, that education is needed in order to become a professional and make money. In the old days father would teach his son a profession, a mother would teach her daughter. This has been passed onto the state, and the state, however it can, continues what once was a family responsibility. Education began to be treated utilitarianly, from the point of view of material gain. Certainly education is useful. But not in respect that it gives one a trade.

Education, and this is where it's primary value lies, opens up the world to the person beyond his limited horizon. It makes life more interesting and the person who lives that life, richer. That's why broader, more general education is more valuable than narrow. The broader is actually more practical, too. Any employer who needs real specialists knows that narrow specialists are only good in the beginning, while the broader ones are getting the hang of the profession. But in a couple of months, the broader professionals are further ahead, and especially if the business is changing, narrow specialists find themselves in the shadow because they are not capable of changing with it.

There is only one life, and education makes it much more meaningful and interesting.

A Russian version of this article can be found here.