Education Makes People Easy to Govern, but Impossible to Enslave

Education makes people easy to govern, but impossible to enslave

Education is a valuable gift, and fortunately in many countries people have access to it. Not long ago, education was considered the privilege of only the wealthy class, leaving the vast majority of the population illiterate. With the spread of democracy, this situation improved and today, citizens in many countries are able to go to schools and colleges regardless of their economic backgrounds. In addition to providing a foundation of knowledge in multiple areas of study, education helps people to find themselves, discover their interests and talents, hone their communication skills, learn respect for authority, and the value of teamwork. Moreover, through an education of social studies, students are exposed to important lessons from both the past and present: dictatorship, slavery, religious and ideological wars, terrorism, ethnic and gender inequality - injustices that can all be traced back to a lack of education and understanding of the world and individuals in it.

Just looking back over the past couple of centuries, there has been an increasing majority of countries worldwide that acknowledge, at least in principal, certain universal human equalities and rights, regardless of age, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, level of income, religious or political beliefs. We have been learning to acknowledge the existence and value of variety within the world's cultures, and have been learning to respect each other's differences with increasing tolerance. The social advances, made in recent history, began at their most basic level with a spread of increased knowledge, and, just as with institutional learning - people get to know, recognize, and appreciate previously unknown things. Things, which according to human nature, it's likely they previously feared, rejected or dismissed, refused to acknowledge, shunned, ridiculed, or outright persecuted simply because these things fell outside of their immediate realm of understanding, and thus were seen as a potential threat to their "known" world. Education and higher learning is the most effective way to combat this unfortunate, but natural, human tendency. Simply put, education makes us more tolerant to our surroundings as we grow to understand the world around us. Education helps us make wiser decisions and find more effective solutions to problems. It makes us better at the things we do, and in turn, we make the world a better place for ourselves, and future generations.

It's important to add that, although we all face many losses and setbacks at various times throughout our lives, our education - the knowledge we have gained - can never be one of them. An investment in education is an investment that never decreases in value, and is never lost.

When the percentage of educated citizens is higher, a country does