| EDUCATION/BEING LEARNED AND HUMAN ADVANCEMENT. The word ‘education’ came from a Greek word “educo” meaning ‘to draw out what is within’ . In my native Ibo language, when somebody is an illiterate, he is referred to as someone in ‘ishi’ ishi meaning darkness. An uninformed man is a deformed man because he is in a suffocating darkness where everything seems strange and mysterious to him, this brings about fear in him and psychologically anything that makes us afraid inspires a fight or flight response in us. In the case of the ignorant man he finds himself fighting to eliminate what will in the long run be good to him. The process of education is double; self education and scholarly education with self education being more important to our sucex than scholarly education. Education in its real sense is a process of bringing out what is inside us, that means that everything we do should bring about our education, the things we read, the kind of people we associate with, our career, the places we go to (i think that’s why when one is well travelled, he is respected because it is assumed that he knows much by virtue of his association with a wide network of people) when we read and as we learn from the school of our past, all these can ‘draw out ‘ something good in us. Life is full of unending lessons learnt through trials, temptation, vicissitudes and challenges. “Go to the ant you sluggard and learn her ways”- Holy writ This is an instruction for mankind to go and learn from nature. Nature is a great teacher of truth and man over the ages has learnt a lot from her, the construction of dams, the flight of planes, the building of flyover, and many more technologies. For your dreams and aspiration to come to pass, you need a large amount of information knowledge or education. Within you is a storehouse of information which you can utilise if you want to activate the genius within you, you can activate this inner energy if you learn from the school of life comprising of many books and people but the ones crucial to your wellbeing are the book of yourself or the book of your mind, second is the book of interpersonal relationship and lastly the book of nature. Education is the key to human enlightenment or advancement, your personal education transcends the education you get in the walls of a university. A university contains the thought and aspiration of other men, it doesn’t contain the final knowledge else man would have invented or known all that there is thereby reaching the zenith of human advancement. “Yourself education” is the best thing that can happen to you, you come into this world full with many potential and capability, don’t belittle yourself by confining yourself to what others think or say……search within you for you may hold the key solution to the greatest challenge that has plaque man. Don’t think that because you lack formal or scholarly education you will not be able to achieve the best in you….the Wright brothers were bicycle repairers when they gave the world its first flying machine(the plane). They never had Ph.D or B.Sc. They were just ordinary men, instead the Ph.D holder were busy preaching and writing big big books using laws of physics to demonstrate why man cannot fly. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain if you exercise your mind along the highway of self education.
by Eleas Stanley |
