It is the uneducated mind and a personality that lacks a coherent direction that tends to seek terror as its anchor. But I am not talking of terror as a political weapon or as some act that will make it to the headlines as an agent of destruction. Terror stalks only when the finer portals of the human mind slumber. This sleep is when education is unable to find access and build a foundation. It is this foundation that needs to be constructed with a lot of involvement and focus.
It is such an involvement and focus that any educational institution must and often does aim at nurturing. Educational institutions are the nursery of mind development that are going to be the sole benefactors of mankind. Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive: easy to govern, but impossible to enslave. This is where the difference between the uneducated mind resorting to terror and the educated mind leading the masses is placed.
An important corollary of the above definition is also that countering the conventional forms of terror is a possibility only when most of us are armed with an education. The aim of education should be rather to teach us how to think, than what to think. This is another truth about terror being present in slumbering human minds. Terror is not just lobbing grenades and planting bombs. It could be a simple act of bullying and unwarranted aggression. It is only the mind awakened by education that will attempt to initiate development, promote harmony as a precursor to evolution, and in its own ways of embraced humility, catalyze a march towards a better tomorrow as a team.
The catch-word is togetherness. Terror resists togetherness. An educated mind prefers to walk hand-in-hand with others to an irresistible future. At PT Education we aim to build a tomorrow that is full of educated minds! Quite rightly, education is the nursery for tomorrow!!
[Arvind Passey]
[2006]
Written for PT Education
