Education – An Analysis

Section 1: What is Education? What is the job of any institution?
Our Holy Prophet (Peace be upon him) said “Acquiring Knowledge is compulsory for every muslim”.

Our religion Islam makes no difference among male and female in acquiring knowledge. Knowledge acquiring is a must and it is a necessity. But, is education the same as Knowledge. This is the first question to think about.

A proverb states: “In an institution, you could gain education but not knowledge”.
This proverb indicates that institutions like schools, colleges, madrashas, etc can give education but not knowledge. This indicates that knowledge is different than education.

What is Education? Education generally means acquiring knowledge or skill.
What is Knowledge? Skills or expertise attained through education or experience.

The above two definitions intermingle with one another and thus looks that they are just one out of the two.

But, in reality, institutions teach you so that you can get a degree but they need not provide or culture you to be an individual who could acquire education or knowledge and maintain it and do impart it on to the society. This could be simply said as “If what we know is not applied, then it is a total waste of energy and resources”

This is what happens now a days:
1. People study something and work on something else.
2. Everyone goes around to gain a degree by getting some grades (call it as first class or 60% or whatever).
3.  People don’t consider what is important for them to learn. But concentrate on those they feel can give them money.
4. and so on…
A single scenario: Lets say that a father don’t want his son to work as a doctor after attaining a degree. But, he sends his son to a medical college to get MBBS degree. What is the use of this degree?
You might say that no one does that now… Yes, agreed.
People don’t do that MBBS degree because to study MBBS, you either need good grades or lot of money. But, if MBBS is offered at every small college in India and it is easy to get that degree, people will do that. This is what is happening with many Bachelor degrees like Arts, Science and Engineering.
Please re-think what are we gaining ???
In the next article, lets look at what we need to look for, if we want to gain knowledge.