To what extent is education important?

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Question (Q): Acharya Ji, I was reading one of your articles on education in which you have said that our normal education is important up to some extent. My question is, ‘Up to what extent? Who decides that extent?’

Acharya Prashant (AP):

Formal education is important to the extent the body is important.

The less the body-identification,

the less is the importance of object-centric education.

Q: But formal education also plays a role to make one less bodily identified.

AP: The ‘one’ that is already body-identified. Right? Which education helped him make body-identified?

Q: Here I am living in a village. Most of the people are landless-laborers. All they think is about their daily bread. Had they been more educated they might have gone ahead of food and shelter.

AP: Basic food, shelter, and then a suite in Boeing.

Bigger food, bigger shelter.

Q: That’s why I have used the word ‘might’, but if someone has to make efforts for his daily bread, his body would constantly remind him that he needs to feed the body first. It is very difficult for such a person to think that he is not just a body.

AP: Who brought him to this condition?

Q: If a child is born in such a family, it is not his fault.

AP: The family too is conditioned by its education.

Q: Today I can read a novel because I have Rs. 250 to buy it. And my education has played a very important role in it. But if a family’s daily income is Rs. 100 per day, can anyone in the family think of buying such an expensive book?

AP: Where does poverty come from? Is there anything poor in existence except man? Ever sen a poor flower in a jungle, or a poor animal?

Q: There may be different forms of poverty in flowers and animals that we do not know about.

AP: No.

Poverty is when you feel poor. Poverty is when you want to store.