Education is a progressive discovery of our ignorance

Education has different meaning for a lot of people. For some it is just a path to their
desired career. For others it is moral, spiritual and intellectual development. The true
and simple meaning of education can however be defined as learning new things.
For what was once ignorance, transforms into education. We believed the world was
flat, till Copernicus came along, and it took the human race some time to accept his
theories. Enlightenment in Europe led to discarding of the old Church theories and
led to the ideals of liberty, equality, fraternity. Education in this manner, is a
continuous process of unlearning old things and learning new things. Facts do not
cease to exist, because they have been ignored, they are just yet to be discovered.
And education is our best defence against ignorance.
Every day mankind garners some new knowledge and everyday there is some new
invention. Those who don’t update their knowledge, ultimately perish or disappear
into the shadows. This however, highlights the saliency of ignorance also. Without
ignorance, there could have been no discoveries. There is always something to learn.
That is why it is said that the best teacher is one who not only teaches, but also learns.
For quite some time, we were ignorant of our past and of our future. But education
has changed that. We know now that the planet we live in, was formed due to a ‘big
bang’ in the universe.
In conclusion, the world we stand today is ignorant in relation to many things, which
would be known to our future generations and educated in quite a few things
unknown to our ancestors. And those who fail to become educated with passage of
time, become extinct, like the dinosaurs.