According to Bacon “Reading maketh a full man; writing an exact man and conference a ready man.” And if someone asks what reading, writing and conference make together, anyone would say that all of them stand for Education. In other words, we can say that education makes anyone complete, accurate and worldly wise. It means that no one is complete without education.
Thus we can confidently say that education is necessary an all-round development of the personality of a human-being. He cannot hope for success, name, fame and prosperity in life without it.
Even a nation would be devoid of any progress, if its citizens fail to have the benefits of education. H.L. Wayland has correctly said, “Universal suffrage, without universal education, would be a curse.” For the success of any democracy, education is a must. Imagine a country with illiterate ministers voted to power by illiterate people!
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Unfortunately, there are many people who downgrade the value of education and say that it has never benefited anyone. But this is not correct. Knowledge is too far advanced today for a man to gain without its specialized branch. Trade, industry, agriculture, medicine, the I.T. and all other areas have become so complex that no one can take up any job without being educated.
An educated man will never find himself stranded in the midst of any difficulty. His brain, developed by serious- thinking during his academic years, will unfailingly arrive at some solution to the problem that besets him. This is what education prepares us for. And most of all, education gives us not only the mental but also physical strength necessary to face any challenges of life with dignity.
An illiterate person simply gropes in the dark, leaving result to chance or fate. He is ultimately dependent on others. Farmers in India, in olden times, who could not read or write, were cheated out of their land and willingly suffered exploitation and injustice only because they had no education.
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They were deprived of their rights by unscrupulous landlords, moneylenders and middlemen, who made them, put their thumb impressions on false documents of possession. Women in India had been suppressed, dominated and ill-treated only because they had no education.
But now with their having been educated to a certain extent, the old situation has started changing quite fast. Now they have come out in the open to fight for their rights. They are not dependent on others, nor do they silently submit to whatever cruelty is meted out to them.
Education liberates a man’s mind from wrong thinking, ignorance, superstitions and prejudices. It frees him from evil influences and vices. It equips him with knowledge and skill, enabling him to make a good living, culminating in his being an ideal citizen.
With the spread of education, gone are the days of bonded labour, economic slavery, pangs on account of being an untouchable and being misled by black magic. Thus it can be boldly claimed that education has awakened the masses all over the world.