"I believe..." Paper

The Meaning of Education: Why Knowledge is Power

I believe that education is paramount because knowledge is power. A solid education not only broadens one’s mind and world view, but also has the potential to expose an individual to new concepts and ideas he/she may become passionate about. What’s more, one needs only look to such instances as the Taliban rule and the Cultural Revolution—tumultuous times in history when people were deprived of a decent education—to see that ignorance is far from blissful, and that the uneducated mind is often subject to subordination and oppression form powerful authority.
Education is critical because it exposes people to diverse perspectives and ideas that help to shape his/her own opinion. When one soaks up knowledge from literature for example, he/she can learn about different cultures and issues told from unique points of view. With exposure to many different sides of a story, a person can come to his/her own conclusions, which ultimately helps to define an enlightened world view. What’s more, not only does education teach important information and skills that will be beneficial for a successful career and future, but also, an education in philosophy as taught through history and literature can have a profound affect on one’s subjectively defined morals. By learning about the wide array of interpretations and answers to certain fundamental questions—such as the meaning of life or what it means to be good—one can essentially discover how to fully rise to his/her highest potential and lead a fulfilling life. Without access to an education, ignorant people must rely on either society or authority to answer these questions. All too often, uneducated people accept the oppressive and unjust circumstances they live in because they are not inspired to demand equality, freedom, and inalienable human rights, since they have never been exposed to these ideas through education. History has shown numerous examples of how authority uses this fact to keep certain groups in subordination, recognizing that a decent education would open their eyes to threatening new ideas that could fuel civil disobedience or rebellious responses to their subjugation.
My Forbidden Face and Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress present two specific examples of the consequences of authority depriving those under their rule of education, thus taking away their intellectual power and significance. In My Forbidden Face, the narrator Latifa documents the atrocious Taliban takeover of her home town in Afghanistan. Prohibited to receive an education or work outside the home, women were hopeless prisoners locked in a cage of ignorance. Latifa describes that the Taliban were “Killing us [women] stealthily, in silence. The worst prohibitions…annihilate us by locking us outside society”(38). The deprivation of education was so aversive at this time because in essence, women were denied a food they so hungered for, and forbidden to satisfy their desire to share an intellectual pursuit that was reserved for men. This book not only shows how authority gains power by keeping the masses ignorant, but also, the actions of the Taliban illustrate how not all education is beneficial. Without considering different points of view, the Taliban showed fervent devotion to the Koran, but they manipulated the ideas presented in this holy book to justify irrational, degrading decrees that they forced upon those under their control. This shows how extremely narrow viewed learning, highly subject to bias, can have nasty consequences. This concept is also seen in Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, set during the Cultural Revolution—a time when a very specific type of biased education forcibly replaced educational freedom. During China’s Cultural Revolution, Mao instigated re-education, transforming education to focus solely on socialist ideology, and sending millions of youth to the countryside to eliminate any teachings considered bourgeoisie. Isolated in the mountains, the boys in this novel feel the pangs of hunger for the freedom to pursue education. When they discover a suitcase of forbidden literature, they are driven to steal it, and these novels from around the world open their eyes to the foreign concepts of love, freedom, self-reliance, and original ideas. The boys become engrossed with the novels because they tell of life’s beautiful intricacies, and with their increasing knowledge, they become self-empowered. In addition, the boys use the novels to educate an ignorant country girl, and in the process, the seamstress is so affected by the stories that she is inspired to leave the mountain and search for greater opportunities for self-fulfillment.
In conclusion, with education comes power, and ignorance often yields subordination. Education is important not only for an individual to grow and prosper, but also to prevent narrow-minded thinking and control from authority. The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake is a privilege because thorough education, one can discover who they are and how they hope to influence the world.