There is a big difference between a schooled man and an educated man. One may be schooled but not educated and another may be educated but not schooled. If a man had the privilege to study in school but he is uncouth or inconsiderate and does not live what he had learned then he is a schooled man but not educated.
Man, as proclaimed by nature has the capacity to think, discover and do work that is necessary for his benefit. We are not like brutes who keep on doing usual things for they never learned a single thing. A great example given is the birds. From the oldest times, they had been making their nest as a place of refuge. None of them ever imagined to build a more complex dwelling place. Why? Because nature destined them to be in that way and they were never educated. As for human beings, we learn from different sources; from our teachers, parents, religious leaders, friends and even from our own personal experiences. It is because of education that we transited from living inside caves during the primitive era and now in the modern generation in sky towering buildings and in no distant time in other planets.
Education is not only gaining knowledge but also living that imparted knowledge. A noted wit and raconteur with the name Peter Ustinov once said that “Education is a process by which a person begins to learn how to learn.” A normal person would use more or less fifteen years of his/her life studying lessons in school. But all of those years would be put to waste when there is no gradual change in his/her way of living. Letting yourself be educated means lighting a torch that would help you see and discover opportunities laid upon by others as you journey towards success in life.
It is important for every individual to be educated and not merely schooled. It is by this way that the whole human race gets personal evolution. What do I mean by this? It is like breaking the ice to free us from the dreaded lifetime dependence on others. That is what we call development and when there’s development there is change. We tend to discover every single thing in this world. We ask questions that bother our innocent minds. We find answers to infinite problems.
Education gives us the ability to cope up with the increasing number of problems and trials in the society. It gives us reasons to learn new things for us to be able to uplift our ways of living. In education, we, the most valuable creation of God establishes change that in our point of view is essential for our personal and social growth.
Being an educated person literally means being ready to face the reality that the world is offering. And in facing that reality, our readiness must be at its peak for in education, we are capable of distinguishing what is best and what is worst. When we would choose what’s best, change from the inside being and the outside world happens; a change that would turn out permanent.
It also helps us not only to look forward to something but to work for something we thought is significant. Education builds in us an innate desire for change. It is that desire that encourages people to apply their knowledge for their use and benefit. We use our being as educated individuals in knowing what the predicament is then searching for the right solutions for it. A long process it is but that’s how we apply education in real life. We learn, search, retrieve and solve.
Education by nature is an eye opener. It helps us to look on how to be as effective we may be in the society by using effectively what we learned from education as well as in school. We are studying to be educated and to be educated is to be schooled, skilled and learned in making changes that everybody ought to have: an easier life with lesser problems and life with more value. Education then is a vital tool to change man’s life but such change must be geared towards the goal of making man’s life better.
