Education is Important

By Bruce Dean, red belt

Education is important because it unifies us as a species.  It provides a common framework for human perception.  Without education we could not communicate, or even feed ourselves.  Education is the single greatest key to human survival.  After all, we aren't particularly strong, we can’t run very fast, we don’t have big teeth or claws, and we don’t have armor or a shell.  But we have a fairly big brain, and education makes our brains our greatest tool for survival.  The only difference between me and a Cro-Magnon man living 20,000 years ago is the knowledge in my brain.  And education put that knowledge there.

But education is much more than simply the pursuit of knowledge, studying, and learning.  It is the means by which our culture endures. It is the common body of knowledge that defines us as a race – the HUMAN race.  Everything from the concept of wearing clothes to language to music to love to astrophysics – and even, unfortunately, barbarism and hatred - is an integral part of what it means to be human in this place and time in this universe.

We have all heard fanciful tales of children raised by wolves or porcupines or dolphins.  And in those tales the adult does not know language or even simple things like the fact that a spoon is used for eating rather than as an item to be worn like a bone through one’s nose.  It is only through education and the consequent propagation of our culture that we know what spoons or chairs or cell phones are for.  And it is the propagation of our culture which allows civilization to exist – that allows us to live (mostly) in peace, that defines our behavior amongst one another.  All of this – education – is ultimately what separates us from cavemen (and cavewomen).