“Education is a passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today”
— Malcolm X
We all say that education is important but in reality, it’s nothing short of an understatement when it comes to portraying how crucial it actually is. It’s probably the most essential weapon that one could possess and wield to revamp the world. As the famous saying goes, “A pen is mightier than a sword”, nothing can feel more accurate than the situation when we take the topic of education into consideration. An educated man is so much more powerful than one who is oblivious to the world. Education is a transforming journey that shapes an individual for the better and is accompanied by success, failure, struggles, patience, tolerance, efforts, sacrifices, and achievements. It helps one understand the meaning of hard work and nurses the individual to understand how life actually progresses. This journey begins at home with our parents and continues till we die. It’s the key process that aids in maintaining the socio-cultural balance of our society, empowering people to comprehend all the aspects of the world.
However, history suggests that although this is the most essential process that needs to be inculcated in every individual, not everyone is able to taste its essence. What I mean is, even though some people have been given these opportunities since the dawn of civilization, there is still a considerable fraction of people who have been denied this birthright. In ancient times, women were treated with respect and given the opportunity to educate themselves and study further to create their identity. It was the golden era. However, somewhere in the middle things went south and those who were once deemed as honored mothers and leaders were then treated as people who needed to stick to their homes and take care of their families and children rather than trying to find their place in the world. It was alright for men to be educated and become the bread earner of the family, but if a woman tried to do the same, she would be chastised as someone who had lost their character. They were meant to stay at home and learn how to manage household tasks rather than being given an opportunity to gain worldly knowledge.
Women and girls in the developing world are often denied opportunities for education. Lack of education limits prospects decreases family income, reduces health, puts women and girls at risk of trafficking and exploitation, and limits the economic advancement of entire countries. World Education believes that education for girls and women is the single most effective way to improve the lives of individual families as well as to bring economic development to poor communities worldwide. Gradually as time passed by, the need for educating women was understood and several reforms and amendments were made to uplift the current situation of literacy amongst the female population. Some of them include opening up schools dedicated especially for girls, movements to help them enroll into institutions, building women communities to help empower themselves to be able to voice out their opinions, and providing access to social and financial amenities required to educate them, etc. Education enables a woman to take greater control of her life and gain inclusion in decision-making processes, which unleashes her potential to contribute socially and economically to her family’s and community’s wellbeing. Yet, today, millions of girls and women across the world are denied their right to education, be it due to debilitating poverty, or the so-called socio-cultural norms that implicate that women are meant to be homemakers and not caretakers of society. What is sadder is that two-thirds of the world’s illiterate adults are women.
The resuscitating need of the hour is that everyone realizes the vitality of educating the female population and accepts the idea wholeheartedly. Madeleine Albright, quoted in Women Empowered, “Experience has shown that when women have the freedom to make their own economic and social choices, the chains of poverty can be broken; families are strengthened; income is used for more productive purposes; the spread of sexually transmitted disease slows; socially constructive values are more likely to be handed down to the young”. Just like the 2 wheels of a bicycle, education for both men and women is required for the smooth growth and development of society as a whole. Though the education system has evolved and is more diversified now, there is still a long way to go in order to make way for a bright future for the development of the world. So, let us all work together and create awareness about this on an individual scale at least so that the future of our society becomes a little more coruscating.
Author – Sagorika Ghosh, Illustrated by – Suhana Seemar
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