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Mauritius: Education Is Not Just About Instruction
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L'Express (Port Louis)
18 March 2008
Posted to the web 18 March 2008
Raj Paneken
Port Louis
There are still many people who have a misconception of the word education. They associate education with going to school and passing examinations.
For them education means certificates and degrees. They fail to grasp the meaning of education which means training, bringing up. To educate means to teach someone what to do, what not to do and what needs to be done to enable him stand on his own feet. The education of the child is the least of their worries. Society is not their funeral. The upsurge in indiscipline and violence at school is immaterial to them. The behaviour of the child in the street, in the bus, in the stadium and at school should not have priority over his studies and is simply relegated to the background. They mix up education with instruction.
If today we are heading towards a rotten society which is being gnawed away with an upswing in crime, violence, robbery and indiscipline, it is because we have lamentably failed to give those who make up that society a balanced education. We have been erring too much on the instruction of the young at the expense of their education.
The society of tomorrow depends heavily on the kind of education we dish out to the child today. The educators have a crucial role to play behind the informal education of the child which is none other than his manners. The child gets his first education in his cradle at home. He is taught to accept others, to share what he has with them, thus he is being inculcated with the spirit of tolerance and generosity. He is taught how to behave vis-à-vis his elders. He should be taught to accept what is good and to reject evils. Manners will make him an exact man and will build up his personality.
If man needs instruction to earn his living, he also needs education to live socially. The role of the educators behind the behaviour of the child is material, especially that of the parents. If a child is devoid of manners, the blame should be laid squarely at the door ofthe parents.
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Education can help create a better environment and a healthy society. It is a mighty weapon which can be used to combat the many evils which are causing untold harm to our society. The child himself will be able to live a better and fuller life and avoid the many pitfalls which misbehaviour would have led him into. Many prejudices can be ironed out, many barriers can be pulled down, many prisons can be closed down with a judicious education.
The educators should stop labouring under the delusion that education means stuffing the young with figures and letters to get them through their examinations. Otherwise we shall be having a society of intellectuals bankrupt of manners. Man needs both formal and informal education to enable him live fully. Therefore it is the bounden duty of educators to see that our young get a balanced education-instruction, to enable them to earn their living and education, to help them have a place in the society of tomorrow, besides making that society livable.
A livable society must imperatively be endowed with education. In a society where there is a bankruptcy of education, people simply exist but do not live. We must begin to believe in education and give it all its importance to save our society from an inevitable degradation, unless we prefer existence to life and learn to take it for granted as a fatality.
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