Continuing Education Tips

Can sole purpose of education be always linked to livelihood?

Hi i am a student of std 12th..we have a debate in college and we have reached the finals with a lot of competition .The topic for the finals is "Sole purpose of education is livelihood"and we are against it.Can someone help me in giving me some advantages and some examples against this topic. please please.i require it very urgently.Thank you

Public Comments

1. This is an interesting point that has often been debated. You could do some research on Spartans v/s Romans. The spartan's were superior at warfare because their education was in warfare to fulfil an immediate need. But the Roman socieity was more enduring because their education aimed at training the mind.
2. You can live without education, some of our MLAs and MPs are good examples. Education is not for stomach but for the mind. In fact God does not want man to have knowledge, and that is why He instructed Adam not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Adam disobeyed God, ate the fruit sharing it with Eve, and lost his Innocence and Happiness. Eating made him Intelligent but at the same time, mortal. The educated survive, but the uneducated do not die of poverty.
3. The purpose of education is to enable people to think for themselves. It is NOT to prepare them for the great job centre of life! If education was just about training for a job there would be a lot less innovation in the world. If people are given a well rounded education in all the basics and a knowledge of the classics and taught to think clearly and not be swayed by modern persuasive cultural conditioning, they will become more original in the way they think and look at the world and not so sucked in to popular brainwashing methods.The people who want to sell you things often use appeals to your inadequacies, as in using stereotypes (racist often) and your need to feel popular or belonging to an accepted group. (You will feel good if you have this type of car or that kind of after-shave or if you drink Pepsi or whatever. It's very persuasive and starts so early in life that it is very difficult to resist if you are not educated to think for yourself and figure out what is going on) There are not enough people in the world who do this, Noam Chomsky is one of my favourites. There was a book published some years back called "Straight and Crooked Thinking" by Robert H. Thouless which was very good on this subject. Education is for teaching you how to think clearly and giving you lots of information about the world in order for you to make up your own mind. Anyone who does this can take up any branch of work and more easily learn to do it in an efficient and original manner. Good luck in your debate. (I am glad you are against the motion!)
4. The important thing here is (as Survivor says) to distinguish between education and training. Learning how to fix a diesel engine is training. A literature course is education. One provides you with a job skill, the other cultivates your mind. It's not that there is no overlap between the two. There is. A course in economics can open the mind to how world economies function but also train one to function in the business world. An English course can help our reading skills as well as making us think. If you want evidence about how the human race has always valued education, look at the popularity of, say, Shakespeare's plays 400 years after his lifetime. Certainly there's not much utility in experiencing this work. It's food for the mind. Best wishes!