Importance of education: Education is the process of imparting knowledge, skill and judgment. Education is something very crucial for people to acquire in order to achieve their goals, be successful and have a bright, creative and productive future. It is a lifelong process that improves people’s knowledge, skills, personality and attitude. To be educated is to have acquired a certain degree of knowledge.
Education may be formal or informal. It is formal when the learning process is being undergone in an officially established and recognized institution of learning within defined form and structure. On the other hand, what constitute informal education are other processes of learning which happens in an unofficially recognized institution of learning.
For the purpose of this discourse, we are basically concerned with formal education and its important. The importance of education has its effects implicating on both personally on individuals and on the society at large.
Here are the importance of education.
1. Exposure: Education exposes people to variety of existences and possibilities. It is through education that people get informed of their environment and beyond. For education, people can stay in their various regions and discover other regions. You do not need to have existed I the past in order to know the histories.
One does not need to have been to America in order to know and understand America. These are exposures. Because of education, people are exposed to possibilities, and because people are being exposed to these possibilities, things are made easier by the acts of people exploring and exploiting those possibilities so exposed to them. Because people become exposed through education, there are lesser conflicts and more solutions to life problems.
It is through the exposure achieved through education that some numbers of barbaric African customs became actually viewed as barbaric and consequently abolished. Through exposure, the female gender has been recognized as a living being in the society and became accorded with rights and responsibilities which prior to those exposures, were accorded only to men.
2. Communication: Communication became a lot easier after the advent of education than it was in the past. Education has massively improved the communication skill of people. Asides the improvement on people’s communication skill, communication itself became perfected. The world is a conglomeration of nations with different languages.
Education has made it possible for languages to be taught in academic institutions. Nowadays, linguists are all over the world speaking languages that were not originally theirs. By this, communication helps in facilitating international trades, political alignments and world peace. In addition to this height, communication technologies have been invented to facilitate communication at a minimal discomfort. See how far education has brought us.
3. Two-way power: Education has been correctly described as a two-way power. This is because it gives one an edge over others who are not educated, and creates multiple opportunities for persons so educated. Educated people have the option of making use of his education certificate or deal away with it and employ his inherent capacity as a person, while an uneducated person is left with a one-way power which is merely limited to his personal capacity. Education qualifies one for several excelling opportunities which otherwise cannot be made available to him
.4. Financial security: Not only does education create financial security, it also sustains it. With education, one is open to opportunities of making money. Educated person can be employed or become self-employed. He can as well employ people because he has acquired the potential to do so.
5. Low level of illiteracy: With education, the level of illiteracy in the society is considerably reduced. Illiteracy is a menace that draws the development of the society backwards. Imagine a society where there exist little or no capable brains. Also imagine a state being manned by illiterates; its possible result on the economy. Illiteracy is a risk.
It implies lack of knowledge and understanding. The state of illiteracy may contribute to gender based violence, all manner of abuse, lack of employment, poor maintenance and management of public facilities and funds. Situations which illiteracy can lead to are unquantifiable and unimaginable, and it is dangerous because acts which are done out of illiteracy are always executed with confidence, poor judgment and justifications. But with education, the rate of illiteracy is reduced, and the society feels safe.
6. Employment: Educated people are more open to employment opportunities. Practically, no uneducated person can secure a good job. This has long been established because he has nothing to offer asides manual labour. Sometimes people get educated for the sole purpose of getting employed.
7. Confidence: Education builds one’s confidence. Knowledge has been correctly described as power, in the popular phrase, “knowledge is power”. When someone is knowledgeably equipped, it gives him confidence because he understands the state of things, how things work, and the possible solutions to problems.
Education has become a trend and is now the order of the day. An uneducated person may feel left out and as such, there nothing to be confident about. Education gives a feeling of belonging. In every gathering, an educated person will rather outshine than be intimidated.
8. Innovation: Education had driven people into the discovery of a better way of life. Most technological innovations are made possible because there is something in existence like education. Through education, people learnt of how elastic their brains are. People started putting their brains into use thereby discovering several opportunities and possibilities which leads to an all round invention. These inventions contribute to making life easier.
9. The act of reading and writing: It is through education that people learnt the act of reading and writing. The more people advance in their academic pursuit, the more likelihood it is that they expand in their vocabulary, use of words and communication. You could guess people’s level of education from their reading and writing style and capacity.
10. Sustainability of Health: The importance of education in the health sector can never be overemphasized. This is a sector that has been into several lines of discoveries and inventions. Much impossibility is now made possible in the health sector.
