Education and Money
“What is the reason for going to school or having an education? To get a better income.” This is the common answer I came across. We can get jobs without education, but they are more laborious and earn less income when compared to the jobs done by graduates. Hence, education becomes important to earn money.
Education has become a major business all over the world and also the backbone for some countries’ economies. Nowadays, education is a must for survival in this fast world. Every student dream is to finish learning faster and to get a good job. In some countries like India, if one wants to get the best education, then he has to spend money like water. Even in the case of marriages, one wants to marry a person who has a good degree, so that he/she can get good income.
Let’s assume that there are two persons with the same degree, among which one is interested in doing further research in his field, and the other just want to get a job and work. In the above scenario, the person who wants to research gets less salary and has to depend on funds from government or organizations, whereas a person who works get sufficient salary. So money governs or rules the development of knowledge or education. For example, the American government denied giving funds to the SETI program which is organized by NASA, because of some economical issues, and SETI stands for The Search for Extra terrestrial Intelligence.
Education is a process of learning by which we can acquire knowledge, skills, attitude, values, and much more. A person without any education is like a newly born child. In the beginning, education came to existence or the need of learning arouse only to learn about nature in its various forms, society etc, and not to earn money.
The knowledge, skills, attitudes, values that we acquire through education is more useful to our lives than money. Money may not help us at every situation, where our skills, knowledge etc, help us. About people’s attitudes, we all know the general differences about personality (mental), behavior, nature (mental) between an illiterate and a literate. The values a person acquires through education are the most important for a society. With good values, every one respect each other, treat each other as friends, work together as a team, help each other as a family members.
Not only with money, but each and every one can also survive in this world through education, just by knowing about our earth and its nature. In India there are villages where there is no existence of money; they exchange the things among themselves depending on their needs and they are getting almost free education from government.
In ancient India, teachers were great intellectuals and never intended to earn money through education; although there is a process called ‘guru dakshina’ in which a teacher can ask a favor from a student at the end of his course. The favor is not a fee, and it’s just a responsibility of a student. The students were used to see the world through the teacher’s eyes.
Education should not be a business, but rather should be a service to all people. We should make everyone understand its importance in our lives. I have seen many persons who graduated in some field and later work in some other which is entirely new just because to get better income which doesn’t make any sense. For example my father, he graduated in mechanical engineering in which he was most interested in, but later to get better jobs he converted himself in to a software programmer.
Because education runs on money, our world has larger amount of illiteracy mainly within poor countries. Many people cannot afford a better education and end up with inconsistent knowledge over their subjects. Illiteracy may lead to many worst case scenarios.
The effects of money are not only on education but also on environment. For example oil spill at Alaska; every company which is working at oil rigs knows the damage oil causes to environment as they are educated, but still the importance of money made their educated minds blind and now the Bush government is trying to extend the oil extraction area.
I agree that we need money to survive, but we should not study just for money; we should study to gain knowledge and try to apply in our lives. If every one sees the world through education rather through money, we can have a better earth. In my opinion a successful person is not based his money, but rather on his education, usage of his knowledge towards good, his concern about the welfare of nature or environment etc.[/b]
