"You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you."
--- James Allen
Education is one of the most powerful tools one can harness. Education not only empowers people to make changes in their own lives but upon their families and friends. Time and again education has changed the norms and redefined the characteristics of what we perceive to be “popular culture”.
Education entails knowledge and understanding; the ability to reason and comprehend facts. When one completes basic education he or she now views the world in a somewhat skewed and but more refined way. The person is no more naïve and easy to fool. This change in perception is very important and leads to the overall growth of the person.
For example, during the early 90s in North America colored skinned people mostly Blacks or Negros were severely oppressed and underwent lot of humiliation and savage treatment. They were flogged, killed in large numbers and faced brutal punishment for no other reason than being of colored skin. This discrimination went on for a long time unchallenged and uncontrolled. It was not till much longer did this stop and the Civil rights movement come to force that such actions became looked down upon by society and judged inhumane giving equal rights to both colored and white skinned Americans.
The important thing we must divulge from this anecdote is “Why did the treatment of colored skinned people change?” The answer is simple- it is because of education that resulted in the change of perception and behavior of the common man and society as a whole. As the youth of the Americas started to become more and more literate (than the previous generation) their tastes became more refined and they realized the horror of their barbaric and brutal ways as they studied
human equality and were thought to be just to all people. Trough the slow but steady wind of education, racism was nearly eradicated and wiped out. This shows that literacy can education and a person’s upbringing can change their course of actions and thoughts.
While the education plays a major role on the perceptions of a person so does his or her upbringing. The environment, race, sex, social class and ethnicity all matter. For example, your values and beliefs that affect your perception are typically adopted from your parents or the dominant thinking of the society you live or interact the most in.
For example, the commodity valuable or limited to most is money. A good way to judge and see a person’s perception is where they spend this resource. Whether it is on charity, on themselves, religion, political etc. A child might have seen his/her parent buying fancy cars and cloths throughout his life and not treating others fairly and with courtesy. It is highly likely that the child will do the same often not because he or she is a bad person but because their predecessor did so. To reverse this notion, i.e.- the child donating things to charity when he or she starts to earn money is rare and would most probably happen if the child underwent good education.
All in all education and upbringing determine our perspectives in life in ways we can barely comprehend and through means that we cannot see. Their forces are constantly affecting us deep in our psyche and are what make us who we are and form the core of our personalities. Without these things we would all be the same and our world would be very mundane indeed.
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