Last week I watched ‘An Education’. It’s a 2009 Oscar Nominated movie. This movie is about a 17 year old school girl. The movie begins with her mom and dad’s dream of seeing their daughter go to the eminent Oxford University. This dream is instilled in her in a way that she begins to think that Oxford would be the place where she would begin to explore the world. A gateway to all the great French movies and music and books. She would read and learn and live. In a way she has been told.
Along comes this man who momentarily frees her from her cocooned world and shows her a different world. She is escorted into the world which she dreamt of. She’s taken to music concerts, to the English countryside, to Paris and into the luxuries of life. Not only does she find herself falling for this man but she also finds her parents wooed by this very charming person. He asks her to marry him. Before she can say yes her parents hurriedly offer their consent for they know she will be ‘taken care of’ by this rich, charming gentleman. The dream of Oxford University is pushed away. Who needs an education anyway when you know you shall have everything a comfortable life asks for at your disposal?
She unable to comprehend the flow of her life agrees and drops out of school. As was expected the man turns out to be a fraud. He was already married. He leaves without any apologies to her or her family.
Though the movie ends with her going back to school and ultimately making it to Oxford University, it got me curious. What was the purpose of education in this girl’s life? To give her a good life? To grant her, her dream of achieving the arty things she wished for when the other options did not work out in her favor?
Why did she go back when she had dropped out with complete conviction that what she learnt in class was not necessary for a better life? Why was education condensed to a mere alternative? Why is education never seen as something born out of pure love for a certain subject? What exactly is the purpose of education in our life? Is it just an either-or choice that we make?
Somehow at the end of the movie, I felt they belittled the role of education. Education, in my opinion offers a wider panorama. It should not be a means but a way of life. For once we need to segregate education as learning and then eventually earning process and education as a trans formative process. Both are essentially different.
1 comment:
once again in two completely different lives, our thoughts collide. had been thinking on the subject and meaning of education myself as the dilemma grows even more enormously in work life.
I belong to a more crowded and competitive world. here education is sought essentially to earn a livelihood and find a place in this world.
What is conflicting is that it means much more to me.
makes me question the core philosophy of it.
Whether its purpose lies in the fact of how it could be used or is it genuine love and intelligence.
Should i be a corporate foot soldier or a wandering academic?
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