The Importance of Education

Education has an immense impact on the human society. One can safely assume that a person is not in the proper sense till he is educated. It trains the human mind to think and take the right decision. In other words, man becomes a rational animal when he is educated.

It is through education that knowledge and information is received and spread throughout the world. An uneducated person cannot read and write and hence he is closed to all the knowledge and wisdom he can gain through books and other mediums. In other words, he is shut off from the outside world. In contrast, an educated man lives in a room with all its windows open towards outside world.

The quality of human resource of a nation is easily judged by the number of literate population living in it. This is to say that education is a must if a nation aspires to achieve growth and development and more importantly sustain it. This may well explain the fact that rich and developed nations of the world have very high literacy rate and productive human resource. In fact these nations have started imparting selective training and education programs so as to meet the new technical and business demands of the 21st century.

In the US, many educational institutes offer vocational as well as other training programs apart from the normal credit programs. To cater to the educational needs of the working population, many colleges offer online education. The degrees and certificates offered by these online colleges and universities are very convenient for working people as well as students. Working people needs these degrees to update their knowledge and skill level which will come handy in their promotion and achieving growth as professionals. Students can also pursue an online degree and work and earn at the same time.

In fact, certain professionals like doctors and dentists, are obliged to follow mandatory lifelong learning. This is done so that they keep pace with all the research and development done in the medical field. These professionals not only needs to update themselves about these developments, but also learn new techniques of practice and perfect old ones. Learning about patient management and the delivery of care is rather a continuing process. Since these professionals, especially doctors have huge moral responsibility towards the patients and society in general, continuing education is a must for them.

It is in such a scenario that distance education comes into the picture. Since professionals do not have the time to attend classroom classes, distance education comes as a convenient alternative. They can learn at a time convenient to them and from the comfort of their homes.

Keeping the importance of education in mind, the US Department of Education aims to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access. It also establishes policies regarding federal financial aid for education, and distributing as well as monitoring those funds. It also continuously strives to focus national attention on key educational issues and providing equal access to education.

The importance of education cannot be neglected by any nation. And in today’s world, the role of education has become even more vital. It is an absolute necessity for economic and social development of any nation.


The importance of education is quite clear. Education is the knowledge of putting one's potentials to maximum use. One can safely say that a human being is not in the proper sense till he is educated.

This importance of education is basically for two reasons. The first is that the training of a human mind is not complete without education. Education makes man a right thinker. It tells man how to think and how to make decision.

The second reason for the importance of education is that only through the attainment of education, man is enabled to receive information from the external world; to acquaint himself with past history and receive all necessary information regarding the present. Without education, man is as though in a closed room and with education he finds himself in a room with all its windows open towards outside world.

This is why Islam attaches such great importance to knowledge and education. When the Qur'an began to be revealed, the first word of its first verse was 'Iqra' that is, read. Education is thus the starting point of every human activity.

A scholar (alim) is accorded great respect in the hadith. According to a hadith the ink of the pen of a scholar is more precious than the blood of a martyr. The reason being that a martyr is engaged in defense work while an alim (scholar) builds individuals and nations along positive lines. In this way he bestows a real life to the world.

The Qur'an repeatedly asks us to observe the earth and the heavens. This instills in man a desire to learn natural science. All the books of hadith have a chapter on knowledge (ilm). In Sahih Bukhari there is a chapter entitled "The virtue of one who acquires ilm (learning) and imparts that to others."

How great importance is attached to learning in Islam can be understood from an event in the life of the Prophet. At the battle of Badr in which the Prophet gained victory over his opponents, seventy people of the enemy rank were taken prisoner. These prisoners of war were literate people. In order to benefit from their education the Prophet declared that if one prisoner teaches ten Medinan children how to read and write, this will serve as his ransom and he will be set free.

This was the first school in the history of Islam established by the Prophet himself with all its teachers being non-Muslims. Furthermore, they were all war prisoners. There was all the risk that after their release they will again create problems for Islam and Muslims. This Sunnah of the Prophet shows that education is to be received whatever the risk involved.

On the one hand Islam places great emphasis on learning, on the other, all those factors which are necessary to make progress in learning have provided by God. One of these special factors is the freedom of research. One example of it is that in Makkah, the birthplace of the Prophet, dates were not grown. Afterwards the Prophet migrated to Medina, the city of dates. One day the Prophet saw that some people were atop the date trees busy in doing something. On being asked what they were engaged in, they replied that they were pollinating.

The Prophet suggested them not to do so. The following year date yield was considerably very low. The Prophet enquired them of the reason. They told him that the date crop depended on pollination. Since he suggested them to do otherwise, they had refrained from that. The Prophet then told them to go on doing as they used to, and that, "You know the worldly matters better than me."

In this way, the Prophet of Islam separated scientific research from religion. This meant that in the world of nature, man must enjoy full opportunity to conduct free research and adopt the conclusions arrived at after the research. Placing such great emphasis on knowledge.

This process began in Makkah, then it reached to Medina and Damascus, afterwards it found its center in Baghdad. Ultimately it entered Spain. Spain flourished with extraordinary progress made in various academic and scientific disciplines. This flood of scientific progress entered Europe and ultimately resulted in producing the modern scientific age.

Education is very important for our lives. Without education people wouldn’t have their high-developed machine and would believe that the Earth is a planet around that all another planets are moving. Why people want to have their high education? As for me I have my reasons why I want to get high education.

First reason I want to get high education is for career purpose. From the early age parents very often tell to their children that education is very important to find a good job. And this is true because if you want to be a doctor or a lower, or an engineer you must have an education. Among my friends in Russia when I was asking them why they wanted to get their high education very often they were telling me that it is necessary to get a good job and to make a good career. I agree with them because I think that it is easier to begin my career not from nothing, but with the experience and all education that I would gain in the University.

Another reason why I want to get high education is because all members in my family have already received their high education. My father has finished the Institute of Technology, and my mother has finished Medical Institute. All my life I was listening from them that it is very important to get high education. When I was trying to pass my exams for the University in Russia my family was very nervous. It looked like that it wasn’t me who wanted to get to the university, but the whole family were trying with me to pass all exams. I think that family’s support in getting education is very important. At least it was so for me.

Also I want to get my high education because I enjoy studying. All my life I thought that it is very important to be independent and I was trying to be independent since I was a child. I didn’t like to ask my parents to help me with my homework and I was sitting with my homework sometimes till late night but I did myself understand that all must be dependent from yourself and not from someone else. I loved to study and in a high school was an excellent student. All my life I have been though that I could almost everything if I would really want. When I needed to learn English to pass my exams to university and my family didn’t have enough money to pay for tutoring, I took books in the library and step-by-step began learning language. First I thought that it would be impossible to learn language by myself, but I did it and passed all exams to the university. I learned English not just because I needed it to pass exams in the university but also because I was enjoying study.

High education is very important for me. I want to get my high education for career purpose and for my family. All of that reasons helped me to make right decision and hopefully I will graduate from the university.