Literacy, Training and Education

When words are more than black spots on white paper, the ability to read and write in a language, opens an infinite number of doors. The collective wisdom of millions of people over hundreds of years is ours to devour. Literacy is most powerful tool we can possess in our life. Literacy empowers. With our inherent curiosity, our insatiable appetite for knowledge, we scout for information, our awareness of the world around us increases unconsciously. The world makes more and more sense to us because we get answers to why things are and how things happen. The need for hygiene and sanitation become obvious. We realize the importance of nutrition and knowledge of cause, prevention and cure of diseases. We begin to understand our rights and figure our interests. We can assess our true market worth, manage our finances and determine ways to appreciate our value. We get a bigger picture of life and a global view of the world.

Literacy empowers people. Literacy helps us understand the puzzle and figure how we fit in it. That’s empowerment, when we can independently manage our lives and in the process contribute to the society. Our lives don’t need to be managed. We think for ourselves. Empowerment follows independence. When we care for ourselves, we continuously search for new ways to improve our life and its quality. Empowerment means to think, based on a choice of accessible knowledge resources, to express our augmented knowledge base and to willfully act upon it. Empowerment brings self respect, self confidence and courage. That motivates us to stand up and fight or take risks and experiment. Ordinary citizens become VIPs.

Many people in power resist empowerment. They see it as a threat to their supremacy. They create the framework for citizens to think. They limit access to information and project their restricted world view. They want citizens to subscribe to it. They want to keep the remote control on their citizens’ lives. They don’t want citizens thinking independently outside the small box they give. They want to create an army of followers not detractors. They sincerely feel their interest to remain secure in power is in the greater interest of the citizens. They feel they are divinely empowered to decide what’s best for the citizens and not leave them with these tough decisions. Educated people don’t want every one to become literate, because of the fear that it may imbalance the society. Who will do the dirty and hard grunt labor that needs to be done for the smooth functioning of the society? While they believe their arguments are with the greater good of the society in mind, they feel to realize it would have been drastically opposite had they traded places with those whose life and destinies are determined by others. What remains questionable is whether empowering the labor class will help them find better and easier ways to perform their tasks and uplift their community or just give them ideas to graduate to cleaner and easier jobs. Citizen’s empowerment isn’t just in the interest of the citizen; it’s in the interest of the society as a whole. In a large society with a few thinkers and doers, most doers are responsible for monitoring, restricting, policing, and repressing others. On the other hand, in a large society where almost everyone is a thinker and a doer, a lot more is thought and gets done, and proportionately a lot less man-hours are spent controlling others. Those who do decide others lives may, but they need to earn the respect of a teacher, a leader, a guide, a judge but not police us, doctor us, or even manage us to follow suit.

This explains the importance of the internet and search engines. The internet has opened access to the largest information base ever accessible to the common man. With such huge information base and our limited time and ability to grasp and extract information, search engines play a huge role in displaying information closest to what we want. They crawl the web, index the information and pick and display what they figure we want to know. While what we choose to know is our personal decision what we get to know is dictated by others. Certain mediums that have built trust and popularity over the years get to decide what our world view will be like. The only solution we have to create a correct and accurate world view is to saturate our time and ability to ingest knowledge.

Societies that shifted from the agrarian to industrial phase needed skilled labor to work in their factories and mills. Industrial training was imparted to laborers so they can perform specific functions in the industry setting. This training is supposed to be to seek employment in the industry. These jobs typically rake in sustainable wages. The functions are low end on the chain and the labor easily replaceable, so the jobs never paid more than sustenance. With industrial training people could at least get their foot into a setting that provided livelihood. But the question is, “Can these skills carry over to other functions in other employments or are they just the need of the day in a specific location?” Industrial training should teach not only the job function and its requirements, but also about the nature of the apparatus and material involved and how to be safe and secure on the job. Over time, industries have seen a lot of machination and automation, so people with more sophisticated skills have been needed to operate more complex tools. This resulted in fewer openings in the industry and that too limited to higher skill sets. Thus though industrial training got us a job to pay the rent and bring food to the table, it never guaranteed we’ll get a job security or a function of our choice, but it kept us from homelessness or hunger.

While literacy is a tool to read and learn about the universe, education puts the tool to use. Education is imparting knowledge in a formally structured curriculum. By education I think of attending school and college. The higher we go in our quest for knowledge the more we focus on learning what interests us. Education is the fast track to the knowing the current big picture of the world we live in. Pink Floyd suggests in his rock number “The brick in the wall” that education is used to create conformist citizens who fit in the workforce. Whether the school results in thought control that squishes the imagination and the possibility of creating a beautiful world around us is debatable, but I certainly feel education we get in schools is to find a fit in the society, advance on a career path and become model citizens. As far as suppressing creativity is concerned, I realize our minds are fertile grounds, which, if higher education results in harvesting the same crops everywhere, then absence of such a program may result either in harvesting rare succulent exotic fruits or becoming a jungle of inedible wild berries, which way it goes, your guess is as good as mine. Education also serves the purpose of separating the sharp and bright minds from the slow and passive ones. The elite class is looking for likeminded sharp and bright minds to fill their shoes. Grades and ranks in schools determine the new elite class. But what about those left behind, are they less important human beings? Should they be left to live a life of struggle because they couldn’t face the competition out there? In the real world, we continuously need to prove ourselves; does that justify the competition in schools? I attended college and graduate school to find a high paying glamorous white collar job. My degrees were passports to venture beyond the front desk of a company and into the office of my potential boss. Education certainly was a gift I am thankful for. It freed me from being forced into the low waged, physical labor workforce that work hard in tough conditions, yet command little respect, power or perks. My education has made me snobbish and arrogant, upward looking, desiring to mix with the elite and powerful. I reduced my education as a means to find employment and pay my bills. I haven’t used it to grow, mentally or spiritually, to realize my identity, my role in this big universe and to see the big picture. Education only creates ideal citizens, ideal workers. It should be the liberator. It should help us make more informed decisions in life and in the process empower us to change the course of the society for the better. It should assist us in finding answers to the important questions in life: Why are we here? Where are we from? Where are we going?